


Amuse-Bouche

by dear_monday, two_ravens



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Restaurant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-07-20 10:23:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16135277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dear_monday/pseuds/dear_monday, https://archiveofourown.org/users/two_ravens/pseuds/two_ravens
Summary: “Wentz is here,” said Brendon, and Patrick nearly julienned his own fingers with the lethally sharp knife he was holding.Ten years ago, Pete Wentz had written a lukewarm review of an ailing steakhouse where Patrick, fresh-faced and fresh out of culinary school, had been working as a junior line cook. The review had knocked over a long line of dominoes, and Patrick had wound up out of a job. He’d hung onto the grudge until even he had to admit that it was starting to look petty, especially when his own star was on the rise.Now, Patrick was the youngest head chef in the history of Mise En Place, one of Chicago’s best-known fine dining restaurants - and Pete Wentz wouldn’t leave him alone.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> We started writing this story a little while ago, and then we got distracted and forgot about it for months, because that's, like, our _thing_. But then @[shark-myths](http://shark-myths.tumblr.com) reblogged [these photos of Pete](http://shark-myths.tumblr.com/post/178245258367/theliterarymaniac-1oveandpizza-pete-wentz) and tagged them "#second of all write me the au where he's a food critic" and we were like, oh shit, _we have an AU where Pete's a restaurant critic, maybe we should finish that thing._
> 
> Rated teen and up for this chapter, but that's going to change in a few chapters' time! We'll be updating this story once a week. Enjoy!

“Wentz is here,” said Brendon, and Patrick nearly julienned his own fingers with the lethally sharp knife he was holding.  
  
“Wentz?” he said. “You’re serious?”  
  
“Like a heart attack.”  
  
Patrick groaned. They usually knew when Wentz was coming - he was smart enough to give fake names when he made reservations, but his fake names tended to be eighties movie characters and Patrick was normally able to spot them without too much trouble. Patrick checked the books every day, comparing the details with the files he kept on all the important Chicago restaurant critics, but this one had slipped past him somehow. Maybe Wentz had wised up, or maybe he’d finally succeeded in plumbing depths of pop culture nostalgia that even Patrick hadn’t reached. “No, no, no, _no_ ,” said Patrick, putting the knife down. “He wrote us up three weeks ago! What the hell’s he doing here? What’s he drinking, are you sure it’s him?”  
  
“Uh… Cloudy Bay. His buddy’s on the San Pellegrino. He didn’t book, just walked in. Some couple on date night beat him to his usual table. It’s him, Patrick,” said Brendon.  
  
Patrick sighed. “Well, that explains why we didn’t know he was coming. You said he was with someone, right? The friend, what does he look like?”  
  
“Bearded. Tatted all to hell. Pretty ripped, in a low key kind of way.”  
  
“Vegan option?”  
  
Brendon consulted his notepad. “Yeah.”  
  
“Hurley. He’s here with Hurley.” Patrick pinched the bridge of his nose. “Oh, god, this is happening.”  
  
“Better Hurley than Way,” said Brendon.  
  
Patrick exhaled. “You’re right. Okay. Joe!” he shouted, over the operatic racket of the kitchen in full swing. “Listen, Wentz is here, I need--”  
  
“Dupes of everything on the ticket, bourbon on ice, either Noah’s Mill or Four Roses. Relax, Patrick. You said it yourself, he reviewed this place last month. He’s probably just here on his own dime.” Joe was already in motion to take over one of the line cooks’ stations. He would make two of everything and only the better-looking dish would be sent out, which also meant that both Joe and Patrick could taste everything first.  
  
“Yeah,” said Patrick, rubbing his temples. His hands were clammy and he could feel panic sweat welling up all the way down his spine and under his arms, pasting his white chef’s jacket to his skin. Wonderful. There was no way to fake a four-star restaurant, but these games - as much as Patrick hated them, all the chaos and the panic and the stress - were worth up to half a star one way or another, depending on who you asked, and that half a star mattered. “You’re right. I’m good, I’m good. Okay, B, you’re the head waiter, I want you to take his table.”  
  
Brendon groaned. “I’ve got a ten top out there running me around like my ass is on fire and a birthday party on table six, I can’t--”  
  
“Shit, really? We’ve been slammed all night, I haven’t been out there. Uh… alright, here’s what we’re going to do. Tell Spence he’s taking the ten top and give the new kid the birthday party. They’ve been drinking for, what, an hour? They’ll be in a forgiving mood. How does that sound?”  
  
“Yes, chef.” Brendon turned away, clapping his hands and raising his voice. “Okay, everybody, I hope you’ve got your big boy pants on, because Wentz is here. I repeat, _Wentz is here._ This is not a drill! Tits and teeth, ladies and gentlemen, tits and teeth!”

 

*

 

At the end of the night, when the tables were cleared and the cash was counted and the kitchen was sparkling, Patrick finally stepped outside, locking the back door behind him. Distantly, he could hear the chatter of the waiters and the rest of the kitchen staff. They’d all left via the main entrance, and Patrick had locked up after them. On any other night, Patrick would have joined them, but just then he needed a minute alone to catch his breath.  
  
“You fuck,” he said to the dark alley behind the restaurant. “That wasn’t nice. We had a new kid on today. And four parties. _Four_. On a Thursday.”  
  
“I knew you could cope.” Pete Wentz sauntered out of the shadows like the bad guy in a spy movie, grinning. He’d bleached out his hair since the last time Patrick had seen him and it suited him, playing against the tawny skin and the big, white smile. Patrick was acutely aware of how pale and sweaty he looked in comparison. “Gotta keep you on your toes somehow. What do you say, are you ready to go on that date with me yet?”  
  
Ten years ago, long before they’d ever met face to face, Pete Wentz had written a lukewarm review of an ailing steakhouse where Patrick - fresh-faced and fresh out of culinary school - had been working as a junior line cook. The review had knocked over a long line of dominoes, and Patrick had wound up out of a job. It hadn’t been personal, and it had been a shitty job in a shitty restaurant, but Patrick had been twenty-three and it had smarted just the same. A few years later, Patrick had been dragged kicking and screaming to a friend of a friend’s birthday party, and he’d got talking to a good-looking guy with a wicked smile and unusual golden-brown eyes, the color of burnt sugar. They’d been getting along just fine until someone had shouted his name from across the room and Patrick had realized, with a nasty jolt of surprise, just who he was talking to. By the time Pete had turned back to Patrick, he’d made himself scarce.  
  
Patrick had stayed mad about the loss of that job until even he’d had to concede that it was starting to look petty, especially with his own star on the rise. He’d kept his head down and he’d mostly managed to avoid Pete Wentz in the years that followed - and then he’d landed the head chef job at Mise En Place, and lots of people (Pete included) had started to take notice. It was the most upscale place Patrick had ever worked, if you didn’t count the ruinously expensive sushi place where he’d spent a few months bussing tables and washing dishes, and that meant that it was on the hit list for high profile reviewers like Pete Wentz. Patrick had hoped that it had been long enough for Pete to have forgotten all about him, but he’d hoped in vain. To date, Pete had asked Patrick out every time he’d set foot in Patrick’s restaurant. Patrick had always laughed him out of the room, and Pete had always laughed right back. It wasn’t like Pete actually meant it, after all. Lately, Pete had taken to hanging around outside at the end of the night. Patrick had nearly socked him more than once, but by then he’d sort of gotten used to it.  
  
Patrick chuckled and tipped his head back to rest it against the rough brick wall. It was a cold, velvety night, and he could see his breath in the air. The sudden absence of stress made him feel strangely light, the same way he did after a couple of drinks. He was dead on his feet, but he could stand to stay a minute and indulge Pete’s weirdness. “Hey,” he said. “Can I ask you something? Why d’you always do that?”  
  
Pete stuck his hands in his pocket and rocked back on his heels. His face was half in darkness, but Patrick could see the glint of the streetlights on his white teeth. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m hoping that you’ll change your mind.”  
  
Patrick snorted. “Yeah. Keep trying, lover boy.”  
  
“I’m gonna,” said Pete. He was still smiling, but he wasn’t laughing anymore. “And one of these days, you’re gonna say yes.”  
  
Patrick pushed off from the wall and started walking towards the L. “Maybe,” he agreed. “But today ain’t that day. Goodnight, Pete.”

 

*

 

Pete showed up three more times in the following two weeks, twice with Way and once more with Hurley. His last piece on Patrick’s restaurant had run over a month ago (“Mise En Place, three and a half stars. Understated brilliance from a Chicago institution.”), but it wasn’t unheard of for a critic to come back for more if they suspected that they’d been given special treatment. Patrick knew his food was good and his team were rock solid, but every visit from Pete threw the well-ordered kitchen into chaos, and the strain was beginning to show.  
  
“Patrick, on behalf of your entire waitstaff, I am _begging_ you to do something about this,” said Brendon, at the end of one particularly tense dinner service. They’d been running so low on the red snapper that Brendon had started telling other customers it was already eighty-sixed to make sure that Pete wouldn’t be disappointed if he ordered it. They were standing in the alley behind the restaurant, Patrick keeping Brendon company while he smoked. Brendon had allegedly been on the point of quitting for as long as Patrick had known him, but he claimed that the stress of the last few weeks had driven him back to bad habits. Patrick groaned and rubbed his eyes.  
  
“I know,” he said. “I know. You’ve all been killing it, though. Drinks are on me next week.”  
  
“Awesome. For real, though. Ask him nicely, order a hit, fuck his editor, whatever you’ve got to do. I’m going gray over here.”  
  
Patrick laughed, only slightly uncomfortably. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got a couple of ideas.”

 

*

 

Chefs weren’t supposed to fraternize with critics, but Patrick had been around the block enough times to know people who knew people. He sent out a few messages, and by the time the restaurant was all closed up for the night, someone had gotten back to him with Pete Wentz’s number. He called as soon as he got home, drumming his fingers impatiently against his thigh as he waited for Pete to pick up.  
  
“’Lo?” said Pete, eventually, gravel-voiced and sleepy. Patrick knew it was late, but he also knew that if he waited until the morning, there was a good chance he’d lose his nerve.  
  
“Listen,” said Patrick. He’d rehearsed this speech in his head, sitting on the L on his way home as the city streaked past outside, but he couldn’t seem to remember any of it now. “I’ve been thinking. If we… do this, you’ve got to stop coming around so often, man, my staff can’t take it. I’m losing my mind. And my hair. My mind and my hair. That’s how much you’re stressing me out.”  
  
Patrick didn’t feel like this was going at all well. It wasn’t like he was actually invested in this, but he wished he could have come off as someone smooth and confident, just this once.  
  
There was a rustling noise from the other end of the phone. Pete sitting up in bed, maybe, or propping himself up on his elbow. “Ah,” he said, his voice sharpening, suddenly colored by that megawatt smile. “So you’ve been thinking about me, huh?”  
  
Patrick smiled too, despite himself. “ _That’s_ what you’re taking away from this?” he said, hoping Pete wouldn’t be able to hear it in his voice.  
  
“What can I say, I’m always looking for that silver lining.” Another sound, like Pete was pushing the covers away. “Don’t get me wrong, though, I’m psyched that you’ve finally had a change of heart. When can I take you out?”  
  
“Easy, tiger,” said Patrick, sitting down heavily on the couch. He kicked his shoes off and leant back, closing his eyes. God, he was exhausted. “We need to lay down some ground rules.”  
  
“Mm, talk dirty to me.”  
  
“Be serious.”  
  
“When am I not?”  
  
Patrick ignored that. “First off,” he said, “You’re not taking me anywhere. You know how people in this business talk, we’re both in the shit if we’re seen together.”  
  
“And I love it, this whole Jets and Sharks thing we’ve got going on. Hey, am I Anita? Or do I strike you as more of a Tony?”  
  
“Pete.”  
  
“I’m serious,” said Pete, and he sounded like he meant it this time. “I don’t wanna make your life difficult. Or mine. We’ll keep it on the down low, honest. I just think… we might be good together.” Pete’s voice was low and soft and disarmingly earnest, and Patrick couldn’t hear him smiling anymore. “We never got to finish what we started when you ran out on me at that party. I’d really like to get to know you better. That’s all, I swear.”  
  
Patrick sighed. He felt clumsy, like he was all sharp edges. He didn’t know how to keep Pete at arm’s length anymore. He was also having trouble working out whether Pete was as big an asshole as he seemed, or just a guy with big, dumb, Hollywood ideas about acceptable romantic gestures. Every time Patrick felt like he had it figured out, he changed his mind again. “Yeah,” he said, quietly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Okay. Just… stay out of my restaurant, okay? Or at least give us a heads up. No more surprise visits. If you want my attention, you can call me on the phone like a normal goddamn human being.”  
  
“Scout’s honor,” said Pete, solemnly.  
  
“I mean it. You nearly gave Brendon an aneurysm. He’s twenty-five, Pete, he’s too young to have to see a doctor about his blood pressure.”  
  
Pete laughed, low and warm. “Alright, alright. When’s your next night off?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It wasn’t as if Patrick had sat down and made the executive decision not to date, it had just… happened, little by little, and now he was staring down the barrel of his first date in forever, he realized that he’d completely forgotten how to do it. He knew he’d let some things fall by the wayside over the last few years to make room for his job, but it didn’t feel good to be reminded of it. What did people even do on dates? He was sure he’d known the answer to that, once upon a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thursday, everybody! Chapter two is here, and it's date night. Heads up - the rating of this story has gone up accordingly. Enjoy!

Pete and Patrick had both been in the business for long enough that they were sure to be seen together by someone they knew no matter what bar or restaurant they went to, so, on Wednesday night, Patrick took the L to Pete’s apartment in Logan Square. Patrick had changed his clothes three times before he set out, unable to decide whether or not to dress up. He’d landed on a belligerent sort of compromise, clean-ish sneakers and a nice button-down with his oldest jeans, the ones that were threatening to give out at the inner thighs at any moment. Patrick couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on an official date. It wasn’t as if he’d sat down and made the executive decision not to date, it had just… happened, little by little, and now he was staring down the barrel of his first date in forever, he realized that he’d completely forgotten how to do it. He knew he’d let some things fall by the wayside over the last few years to make room for his job, but it didn’t feel good to be reminded of it. What did people even do on dates? He was sure he’d known the answer to that, once upon a time.  
  
Maybe it’d be fun, thought Patrick, grimly, as he pressed the buzzer outside Pete’s building. Even if it wasn’t, Patrick just had to get through this evening and then he could go home and go to bed. Whatever happened, at least Pete had promised to stay out of Patrick’s restaurant. Maybe, he thought, it’d be worth getting that in writing. Just in case.  
  
“Patrick!” Pete’s voice was flattened and distorted by the little speaker. “Glad you made it. Come on up.”  
  
It was one date, Patrick reminded himself, standing in the elevator and shifting his weight from foot to foot. He examined his reflection in one mirrored wall, pulled a face, and pushed his hair out of his eyes. It was getting long and shaggy again; he probably ought to try to chisel out some free time next week and get it cut. He’d tried to do it himself last time, and it hadn’t gone well. The elevator doors slid open and he stepped out, walking slowly down the hallway. It was too late to turn back and go home, wasn’t it? Maybe he should have dressed better after all. He reached the door of Pete’s apartment, hesitated, and knocked twice. He could hear music playing faintly from the other side, and then several loud, self-important barks. The door swung open and a huge white dog came bounding out, jumping up at Patrick, tongue lolling out.  
  
“Hey, boy,” Patrick murmured, crouching down to pet the dog’s head and laughing when it tried to lick his face, its tail wagging so fast it was a blur.  
  
“Bowie, _down_ ,” said Pete’s voice, and Patrick looked up just in time to see him appear in the doorway. He sounded distracted, possibly by whatever it was inside the apartment that smelled so delicious. “Hey, Patrick, come on in. Bowie, dude. Get off him, c’mon.”  
  
“Aw, let him say hello,” said Patrick, still scratching Bowie behind the ears. “I can’t have a dog, I work thirteen hour days. It would end up eloping with the dog sitter. I’d come home one day to find a note saying, ‘I can’t live like this, Patrick, one day you’ll understand,’ signed with a paw print. With the collar left on top.”  
  
Pete laughed and Patrick straightened up, looking at Pete properly this time. He stood there holding the door open, wearing an apron with KISS THE COOK embroidered across the chest. It was the most dressed-down Patrick had ever seen him, and, maddeningly, he still looked like something out of a glossy magazine spread.  
  
“Anyway, hi,” said Patrick, slowly, stepping inside. He’d been expecting Pete Wentz, critic, not Pete Wentz, dog person and owner of embarrassing aprons. “Nice place.”  
  
Patrick had been imagining a sleek, minimalist space, heavy on the glass and brushed steel, but Pete’s living room was warm and friendly, stuffed with books, the couch hidden under three clashing blankets. Patrick knew that he was the one who’d insisted that they couldn’t go out in case they were seen together, but he was starting to regret it. They could have worn disguises or something, he was pretty sure he could have convinced Pete to go along with it. Standing there in Pete’s living room, in the heart of his life, felt… uncomfortably intimate, for a first date. Not that Patrick was planning to come back for a second one. As Patrick watched, Bowie hopped up onto the couch and curled up.  
  
“Aw, dude, don’t do that,” said Pete, apparently to the dog. “We were going to pretend that you’re not allowed up on the furniture, buddy, what happened?”  
  
Bowie made a soft _whuf_ noise and closed his eyes.  
  
“Wow,” Pete muttered. “Et tu, Bowie?” He looked up at Patrick, nailing him with that smile. Patrick felt wrong-footed. He’d walked into this on the defensive, and here was Pete playing the perfect host like he couldn’t have been happier to have Patrick around. It made Patrick feel like an asshole, which he probably deserved but nonetheless didn’t appreciate. “You wanna come through to the kitchen? Food’s nearly done.”  
  
“It smells good,” said Patrick, following him into the kitchen. “What is it?”  
  
“Crab and chilli risotto, if that’s alright?”  
  
Patrick laughed, and hopped up onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar. “Are you kidding me? I never get cooked for. You could’ve fed me pop tarts and I would’ve been happy.” Patrick watched Pete move easily around the kitchen, like he could still have found his way around with his eyes closed. There was something different about the way he looked - was it the clothes? The tight jeans, the rolled-up sleeves? Maybe it was the sprawl of tattoos Patrick had never seen before, wrapping around Pete’s forearms and peeking out where his collar was unbuttoned. Or maybe, Patrick thought, it was just the mirror-image weirdness of being the one sitting around while Pete cooked for once. There was a shelf above the sink, bowed slightly in the middle with the weight of a dozen or more recipe books, but there was no book lying open on the counter. “Hold on,” said Patrick, outraged. He watched Pete taste the contents of the pot on the stove and turn to reach for a jam-packed spice rack. “You can cook. You can really cook.”  
  
Pete grinned. “I was a line cook for three years before I changed sides. What, you thought I’d just been talking the talk all this time?”  
  
“You wouldn’t be the only one,” said Patrick. Most of the critics he’d met had never worked a shift in a professional kitchen in their lives.  
  
“That’s fair,” Pete conceded, as he took the pot off the stove and started spooning risotto into two bowls. “Parmesan?”  
  
“Please.”  
  
Pete added a spoonful of parmesan shavings to one of the bowls and pushed it towards Patrick. “There you go. Don’t judge me too harshly, alright? I have a very delicate ego.”  
  
“Oh, I see how it is.” Patrick raised an eyebrow. “Haunted by the ghosts of bad reviews past, are we?”  
  
The review that had lost Patrick his job had been a pretty tame one, by Pete’s standards. Just a few months afterwards, Pete had written a blistering takedown of a once-popular French fine dining place. It should have been career suicide for a young writer just trying to get into the game - a critic who made restauranteurs so anxious that he couldn’t get a table anywhere was a liability for any publication. But instead of firebombing Pete’s career, the review had gone viral, and Pete had acquired a reputation as a real hardass. Eventually, he’d landed the senior critic job at the Chicago Tribune, and the _La Maison_ hatchet job had passed into local legend. Patrick, who had been working in the kitchen of a mediocre, overpriced seafood restaurant by then, still remembered reading it when it had first been published.  
  
Pete groaned as he sat down next to Patrick. “God, that fucking review. I’m telling you, if I could go back in time and slap the pen out of my hand I’d do it.”  
  
Patrick laughed. “Seriously?”  
  
Pete looked at him for a long moment, and then grinned. “Honestly?” he said. “No. I stand by every word, but if I say that I sound like an asshole, so that’s the party line.”  
  
“Huh.” Patrick sat back in his chair. “Okay. So why d’you do it? You had to know it was either going to make you or firebomb your career, man, that was a hell of a gamble.”  
  
Pete shrugged. “Yeah, of course I see that now. Didn’t feel like it at the time, though. I knew what I was doing, and I did it because I was fucking furious. You know, I was so goddamn angry that these assholes had gotten so--so lazy and so sloppy, but they were still charging people top dollar for it.”  
  
Patrick had never thought about it like that. It was easy to think of Pete and the others like him as the enemy, and easy to lose sight of the fact that, in theory, they all wanted the same thing. “Okay,” he said, slowly. “Yeah, okay. I never ate at La Maison, I don’t think.”  
  
“You’d remember,” said Pete. “It was… sad. There was a lot of talent in that kitchen, but it was like no one gave a shit anymore. I know you’ve seen that before.”  
  
Patrick had. Everyone in the business worked in a kitchen like that at least once. It was a sobering thought.  
  
“Anyway,” Pete said, with a smile. “Enough about me. C’mon, let’s eat. Do your worst.”

 

*

 

Patrick had been planning to thank Pete for dinner, remind him to stay away from his goddamn restaurant and walk out with a breezy, “Don’t call me, I’ll call you!”, no matter how the evening played out. But they finished eating, and Patrick didn’t leave, and Pete offered him a glass of wine, and Patrick didn’t leave, and they moved to the couch and Patrick still didn’t leave. No matter how Patrick tried to think his way out of it by telling himself it was just the novelty of dating again, there was no getting away from it: he was having a good time. You can stay a little longer, he told himself, sternly, and then you’re leaving. And you absolutely can’t kiss him.  
  
“This is… not what I was expecting,” said Patrick, and then immediately wondered if that had sounded rude. “I mean you’re, you know. Less intimidating than I thought. Are you--? Shut up, you asshole, stop laughing! You’re _Pete Wentz_. You could wreck my entire career like _that_.”  
  
“Oh, please, we both know that’s bullshit. People only read my column to see what I’m bitching about this week.” Pete pointed at Patrick with his half-full wine glass. “Don’t tell me it’s not true, I get emails saying exactly that.”  
  
“Maybe,” Patrick conceded. He would have died before he admitted that he read Pete’s column, but occasionally he accidentally clicked on it on the Tribune’s website. And once he was there he sometimes… skimmed Pete’s newest piece before he clicked back to the homepage. It was pure coincidence that he often happened to check the website on the same day when Pete’s column was posted.  
  
“Anyway,” said Pete. “I swear I never set out to have a shitty night, okay? Cross my heart. But I get sick of seeing chefs and owners and managers make the same stupid mistakes again and again and after a while you just stop arguing with the people who want you to be the bad guy and you start leaning into it.”  
  
Patrick rolled his eyes, but he could feel himself smiling. “Oh, it must be so hard to be you. I had honest-to-god panic attacks every time you took down better, more expensive places than us. Made me feel like it might be our turn next, you know? Maybe people think you’re just bitching, but you can’t act like you don’t know they’re listening.”  
  
Pete raised his hands. “Hey,” he said. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Restaurants go under all the time, that’s just the way it is, but anyone who does what I do knows they’ve got clout. I don’t have a problem with expensive food. All I’m saying is, you know, people are broke and hungry. If you’re going to charge fifty bucks for a plate, you’d better be good and sure it’s worth it. Anyway, you’re _Patrick Stump_. You’re the youngest head chef that place has ever had! I know I seem very cool, you know, on the surface--”  
  
“You don’t,” said Patrick.  
  
“--But when I realized I was cooking for you I had to sit down with my head between my knees and breathe into a paper bag for a minute.”  
  
Patrick grinned. “Oh, fuck off.”  
  
“I’m serious! You’re a sneeze away from a Michelin star at thirty-three, of course I was nervous.”  
  
Patrick made a face and finished off his glass of wine. It was getting late, he thought, but he wasn’t ready to go home yet. It was nice to be somewhere that wasn’t either a crowded, sweaty kitchen or his own bed, just for a change. “Jesus, I hope not. I don’t want to get stuck making the same food for the next five years because the owners are scared they’ll take the star back.”  
  
Pete grinned. He had a nice mouth, Patrick thought, and then, a beat later, _oh_. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, that he’d slid from enjoying himself to noticing things like the shape of Pete’s mouth, but it was. That was okay. He was perfectly capable of thinking that Pete had a nice mouth and not doing anything about it. He’d be leaving soon anyway. It didn’t matter.

Except he obviously wasn’t, because now he’d thought about it, he couldn’t stop.  
  
Patrick realised with a guilty start that Pete was still talking, and he hadn’t been listening to a word.  
  
“Hey,” said Pete, quietly, and his eyes flicked down to Patrick’s mouth. “You, uh. You still with me?”  
  
Patrick didn’t remember making the conscious decision to kiss him, or the action of leaning in to close the space between them, but--there they were. It was a strange feeling, like turning over two pages in a book. Pete kissed him slowly, soft and sweet, and Patrick made a hungry, impatient noise, and he didn’t leave. He felt crazy with it, burning up all over, his entire world narrowing down to the slide of their mouths together. Patrick wrapped his hand around the back of Pete’s neck, running his thumb over the half-formed curls there, and he still didn’t leave. It wasn’t until Pete had touched him that he’d realized how long he’d been starving, and now he couldn’t think about anything else. All he wanted was to get closer. He swung himself into Pete’s lap, straddling his hips. God, this was such a bad idea, nothing but trouble, but it felt like… like magnets. Like gravity. Alright, he thought. Alright, so you’ve kissed him. You can stay and make out for a while, but then you’re leaving. And all your clothes are staying on.  
  
“Hey,” murmured Pete. “Hey, stop overthinking. You need to take a rain check? No hard feelings--fuck. That did not come out the way I meant it.”  
  
Patrick huffed a laugh. He was still having trouble thinking about anything about Pete’s hand on the small of his back, warm and solid through his shirt. God, it had been forever since anyone had touched him like this, with _intent_. He felt like he was made of Christmas lights, lit up and sparking all over. “No,” he said, ducking his head to rest his forehead against Pete’s and drawing a long, shivery breath. “No, I’m good.”  
  
“You sure? I can stop,” said Pete, looking up at him with hot, dark eyes, as if he was the one in Patrick’s lap and not the other way around, and it was then that Patrick realized just how badly he didn’t _want_ Pete to stop.  
  
Fuck it, thought Patrick slightly hysterically. Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it. He worked sixty hour weeks and all of his friends were work friends and he hadn’t been on a date in years and he didn’t have the time or the people skills for Tinder, and Pete had a nice mouth and he wanted Patrick. Just this one time, he thought, arching into Pete’s hands. He deserved that much.  
  
“Don’t you even think about it,” Patrick said, and then shivered all over as Pete skimmed his fingertips down his spine, stopping just above his belt. Kissing Pete was like smelling something delicious and suddenly realizing just how long he’d been hungry. Patrick kissed him again, messy and greedy, licking into Pete’s mouth, one hand on Pete’s cheek and one clutching at his shoulder, and he still didn’t leave.  
  
Patrick didn’t leave when Pete’s hands slipped under his shirt. He didn’t leave when Pete gently pushed him back off the couch, and he didn’t leave when Pete grabbed his hand and pulled him down the hallway and into his bedroom, and he didn’t leave when Pete nudged him backwards until the backs of his knees hit the edge of the mattress.  
  
Slowly, slowly, Pete got to his knees and ran his hands up Patrick’s thighs. The lights were low and Pete was painted in gold by the streetlamp outside the window, his eyes dark and liquid and his cheeks flushed, and Patrick still didn’t leave.  
  
“Is this okay?” he said, softly. “God, I really want to blow you.”  
  
Hearing him say it out loud, that hot, wet mouth just a breath away from where Patrick’s dick was painfully hard in his jeans, hit Patrick like a sucker punch. He felt all the breath leave his chest in a rush. “Yeah,” he murmured, reaching out to touch Pete’s cheek. “God, yeah. Yes please.”  
  
Pete grinned up at him, toying with Patrick’s belt buckle. Patrick made a low, involuntary noise and Pete dropped his hand down to palm Patrick’s cock through the layer of denim. It had been so long since Patrick had felt someone else’s hands on him that it was all he could do to bite his lip and try not to roll his hips forward into the touch. It was good, god, so good, but it wasn’t enough. Pete laughed, low and warm. “That’s it,” he said. “God. I want to hear you.”  
  
“You’re gonna,” said Patrick, shakily. “If you ever stop teasing.”  
  
“Oh, I see how it is.” Pete took his hand away and went back to Patrick’s belt buckle and Patrick hissed through his teeth at the loss. “You’re bossy, huh?”  
  
Patrick shrugged. He was, and he knew it. Luckily, Pete didn’t seem to mind.  
  
“Hot,” he said, still smiling. Finally, _finally_ , he unbuckled Patrick’s belt and unzipped his jeans. Patrick lifted his hips up off the bed and let Pete tug his jeans down. Pete sat back on his heels for a minute, running his hands idly up and down Patrick’s thighs. Every touch felt electric, sharp and bright and shocking. Pete licked his lips, like he didn’t even realise he was doing it, and Patrick’s dick twitched. God, if he didn’t get that mouth on him soon he was going to die. Slowly, deliberately, Pete ducked his head to mouth at Patrick through his boxers, and Patrick’s whole body jerked.  
  
“Holy shit,” he said, through gritted teeth, one hand fisted in the sheets and one hand on the back of Pete’s neck. It was the worst kind of torture, the drag of the cotton and the tease of what Pete’s mouth would feel like on his skin. “Oh, fuck, Pete, c’mon--”  
  
Pete backed off, laughing. “Alright, alright. Let me--yeah.” He tucked his thumbs into the waistband of Patrick’s shorts and pulled them down, Patrick gasping as the fabric brushed over the head of his dick and momentarily saturated his brain with deafening mixed messages of _too much_ and _not enough_. Pete wrapped his hand around Patrick’s cock, and let out a long, slow breath. “Holy shit,” he murmured. “Hi. You’re kind of packing, huh?”  
  
Patrick, who hadn’t missed the way Pete’s eyes had lit up, grinned. “I bet you say that to all the boys.”  
  
“Sure I do,” said Pete. “I don’t normally mean it, though. God, look at you.”  
  
Patrick looked down at his own dick jutting up from Pete’s hand, hard and thick and flushed dark, and exhaled shakily. Pete glanced up, meeting his eyes with a look of raw, naked _want_ on his face that Patrick felt his stomach swoop.  
  
“Okay,” Pete murmured, and bent his head down. He pressed a kiss to the crease of Patrick’s thigh, making Patrick’s breath catch on a little gasp, and then ran his tongue slowly along the underside of Patrick’s cock, all the way from the base to the tip, and Patrick moaned long and low. Pete worked slowly, like Patrick was something he wanted to savor, and Patrick wanted to sink into the moment and live in it forever. He could hear the noises he was making, but he was powerless to stop himself.  
  
“Pete,” he said. “Yeah, god, that feels--you’re so good, Jesus, so fucking good.”  
  
Pete turned his head to the side and trailed a string of kisses up Patrick’s thigh, all soft wet mouth and the barest hint of teeth. Patrick felt hot and tingly everywhere Pete’s mouth had touched. “Good,” he said, softly. “Alright, alright. Fuck, I’ve been thinking about doing this.”  
  
Pete ducked his head and wrapped his mouth around Patrick’s cock, and Patrick threw his head back and gasped at the ceiling, his brain filling up with static as that wet, tight heat enveloped him.  
  
Pete took his time, sucking Patrick down slow and lazy and decadent until Patrick was gasping and cursing at the ceiling, willing himself to hold out a little longer. He sank down deep and Patrick whined, hypnotized by the sight of Pete down on his knees with his mouth full and stretched wide, his eyelashes casting spiky shadows on his cheekbones. Patrick didn't know where to look. He wanted to press every detail of this moment into his memory, the line of Pete’s broad shoulders and the little furrow between his eyebrows and the rasp of his stubble against the soft skin of Patrick’s inner thighs. Pete had one hand braced on Patrick’s hip and the other between his own legs, grinding against his palm while he moaned around Patrick’s cock. Patrick’s knees felt weak; he was burning up all over, his own heartbeat almost loud enough in his ears to drown out the gorgeous, overwhelmed little noises Pete was making. Patrick could feel himself shaking with the effort of not letting go and fucking into that hot, wet mouth.  
  
“Pete,” he murmured, low and reverent, and Pete made a wordless answering noise that Patrick felt all the way down to his bones. “Pete, Pete, fuck, you gotta--”  
  
Pete looked up at him, meeting his eyes dead on, and Patrick whimpered. He could feel it inching closer in the way his whole body felt like it was ratcheting tighter and tighter, heat pooling low in his belly. Pete pulled off with a wet, obscene pop, a thread of spit stretching out between his mouth and the head of Patrick’s cock, and Patrick swore under his breath. Pete wrapped his fingers around Patrick and gave him a couple of long, slow strokes that had Patrick squirming, his hips bucking into Pete’s hand.  
  
“That’s it,” said Pete. His voice was wrecked, but he was grinning. “C’mon, I want you to.” He lowered his head again and took Patrick’s cock back into his mouth, still working him over with his hand. There were no more fancy tricks; Pete bobbed his head in time with his hand and sucked and all Patrick could think about was that gorgeous, tight heat.  
  
“Oh, fuck,” said Patrick, weakly. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, _Pete_.”  
  
Pete looked up at him again, those burnt sugar eyes burning into his own, his mouth wet and spit-slick and devastating and his fingers almost a blur. Patrick made a desperate, punched-out sound and came so hard he saw stars, spilling into Pete’s mouth. Pete swallowed but didn’t pull off, slowing his rhythm right down as Patrick shuddered his way through the aftershocks, panting and gasping for breath. When Patrick whined, feeling shivery and over-sensitive all over, Pete finally backed off and sat back, looking up at Patrick with hot, dark eyes. Pete was breathing hard, his face flushed and his eyes dark, his mouth wet and open and used-looking, his dick still hard in his jeans.  
  
“Jesus,” said Patrick. He was still panting, his heart beating fast and his whole body still singing with it. “C’mon, come here, let me--” he pulled Pete up and into his lap so that Pete was straddling his hips. He curled his hand around the back of Pete’s neck and tugged his head down for a kiss, tasting himself on Pete’s tongue. Pete moaned, low and dirty, grinding against Patrick’s hips like he just couldn’t help himself. Patrick smiled against his mouth and thumbed the button on Pete’s jeans open. “Alright,” he said. “Your turn.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Look,” said Patrick. “Don’t--you can’t tell anyone about this, okay? I’m not begging, I swear I’ll take you down with me if you go to the press.” He’d forgotten to breathe while he was making his speech, and there was a long, awful moment of Patrick sitting there, naked and wrapped in a blanket and stinging with humiliation while Pete stood and stared.

Patrick woke with a start in a bed that wasn’t his and stared at the unfamiliar ceiling for a long moment, a sticky feeling of dread pooling slowly in his stomach. That was Pete Wentz lying next to him, snoring softly, his nose mashed into the pillow. Pete Wentz, who could wreck Patrick’s entire career without a second thought. Pete Wentz, who could tell the entire industry that Patrick was the head chef who’d fucked a critic. Of all the fucking stupid times to start thinking with your dick, Patrick thought. He felt hot with embarrassment, scorched all over and smoking at the edges. He knew better - he’d known better last night, too - but apparently he’d decided that one blowjob mattered more than his career and the reputation he’d sunk the last thirteen years into. It wasn’t even as though he could write it off as a drunken mistake. What the hell had he been thinking?  
  
There was a scratching noise from outside the door and Pete groaned. “’M awake,” he mumbled, sitting up. Patrick knew he ought to say something, but instead he screwed his eyes shut and pretended to be asleep. He felt the mattress shift as Pete swung his legs over the edge and stood up, yawning. The bedroom door swung open and then closed again, and Patrick could hear Pete talking quietly to Bowie as his footsteps retreated down the hallway. Patrick lay very still, and tried to force the panic back down. Things could be worse, he told himself. Probably. Somehow. He had no way to be sure that Pete wouldn’t tell (if he hadn’t already, Patrick thought, and his stomach lurched queasily) and it seemed like Patrick’s best bet would be to remind Pete that it would be mutually assured destruction. It seemed like awfully shaky ground to balance his career on. God, Patrick hated that it wasn’t under his control, but it was the best he could do. Just then, he would have given his first-born child and his immortal soul to turn back time. It had been good - it had been the best sex Patrick had had in a long time, which was a pretty depressing thought - but it hadn’t been worth blowing up his entire life for.  
  
By the time Pete came back, Patrick was sitting up, wrapped in the covers. “Hey,” he said, before Pete could open his mouth. His heart was beating loudly in his ears and he was having trouble looking Pete in the eye. “So. Last night.” He swallowed. “Look, don’t--you can’t tell anyone about this, okay? I’m not begging, I swear I’ll take you down with me if you go to the press.” He’d forgotten to breathe while he was making his speech, and there was a long, awful moment of Patrick sitting there, naked and wrapped in a blanket and stinging with humiliation while Pete stood and stared.  
  
“Wow,” said Pete, after a minute. “That’s, uh. I was going to ask you if you wanted coffee, but - okay.” He ran his hand through his hair. There was a mark on his neck - Patrick knew he had one too, a matching set, and he could still feel Pete’s stubble scraping against the curve where his neck met his shoulder. “I, uh… don’t know what the hell I did to make you think I’d do that. I just wanted a real shot with you, this wasn’t meant to be some kind of fucked up gotcha moment. I mean, you said it yourself, it’s not just your career I’d be screwing up. You don’t have to act like you’re freaking out to let me down easy. If you just want to get out of here, I swear I won’t hold it against you. No kiss and tell story, no shitty review. I’m not that kind of asshole.”  
  
For a long moment, no one said anything. Patrick wavered, then broke. He groaned, and dropped his head into his hands. “No, you’re not,” he said. “You’re not an asshole. God, I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m sorry. I’m the asshole.” He risked a glance up at Pete, swallowed his pride and carried on. “It’s just been such a struggle to get myself taken seriously, you know? This is… this is everything I’ve been working for, ever since I was seventeen. Every time I get a good review, every time there’s some line about how I’m the youngest head chef at Mise En Place in however many years. Everyone’s waiting for me to slip up. And now I’m the chef who fucked a critic, so if anyone finds out it’s going to look like I’ve done it before for jobs and reviews and--fuck.”  
  
Pete sat down cautiously on the edge of the mattress, like he thought Patrick might push him away. “I get it,” he said. “I know exactly how long it’s taken you to get where you are. You think you’re the only ones who do your homework? I’ve got a file on every head chef in Chicago. And people know who I am, too, I can’t say yes to a free dessert anywhere in this city without my editor getting on my ass about journalistic integrity. I’m not about to tell anybody I hooked up with a chef. I just… I want you to know that you don’t have to worry. Are we good?”  
  
Patrick felt clumsy all over again, worried that he’d break something whichever way he turned, not sure how to paper over the cracks. “We’re good,” said Patrick. It was easier to say when he didn’t have to meet Pete’s eyes. “I really am sorry.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” said Pete. And then, to Patrick’s surprise, “Stay for coffee?”

 

*

 

Patrick sat on the L on his way to the restaurant a couple of hours later, tapping his heels restlessly on the floor of the carriage. He was staring out of the window at the bright, luminous morning outside, but his mind was back in Pete’s apartment. He’d let Pete make him a coffee in his ridiculous Bunn coffee machine (“Try it,” Pete had said. “You’ll cream your pants.” Patrick hadn’t creamed his pants, but he’d had to admit it was pretty good) and then he’d left in short order, knowing that he still needed to walk-of-shame it home and shower if he wanted to get to the restaurant in time later. He wondered, uneasily, whether he’d done the right thing. He still felt bad about lashing out at Pete, and he still couldn’t decide whether the whole thing had been a mistake or not. Well, he thought. If Pete was a kiss-and-tell kind of asshole after all, then the damage was already done, wasn’t it?  
  
Patrick’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he fished it out and glanced at the screen, which informed him that he had one new message from Pete Wentz. Patrick glanced guiltily over his shoulder, suddenly beset by the irrational fear that half of his staff were lurking nearby, just waiting to catch him talking to Pete. It was mid-morning and the carriage was barely half full. There were a handful of late commuters and a few kids who looked like students dotted around, most of them engrossed in their own screens and their headphones. Patrick thumbed open the message. _So_ , it read, _I had a really good time last night_.  
  
Patrick snorted and wrote back, _That’s what chicks say when they want a dude to come over and fuck them again, right?_  
  
_You got me_ , Pete replied, adding a winking emoji. And then, after a beat, _Seriously, though. It was great to see you not in a kitchen or scowling at me._  
  
Patrick felt a fresh wave of guilt for the way he’d behaved lapping at his ankles. _I had a good time too_ , he texted back. He tugged his coat collar up around his face, feeling like a cold war spy. _I’m sorry I was such a jackass this morning. Pls forward me the recipe for that crab and chilli risotto_.  
  
He hit send and watched the screen impatiently, waiting for the little gray ellipsis. It had been a long time since he’d felt like this, his fingertips tingling and his heart in his throat as he stared at his phone. After a moment, another message appeared. _What do I get in return?_  
  
_Me saying thank you_ , Patrick replied. _Treasure it, it doesn’t happen often._ He imagined Pete sprawled out on his bed in the same boxers and t-shirt he’d slept in - or maybe shirtless, but perhaps that was just wishful thinking - with Bowie curled up next to him, both of them basking in the wintery sunshine, and Patrick wished he was there too. Being a writer had to be nice.  
  
_I’m honored_. _So when are you free next week?_  
  
Patrick bit his lip, hesitating. This was a bad idea, and he knew it. He had a whole list of reasons why: when they were found out they’d both be fucked, and they’d almost certainly be found out sooner or later, and Patrick worked ridiculous hours and he was always tired and he was a prickly, grumpy asshole when he wasn’t working, and and and. Instead, he typed a single word - _Thursday_ \- and sent it before he could talk himself out of it.  
  
The response came almost immediately. _Don’t think so. I asked when you were free, Thursday is when you’re having dinner with me_.  
  
_Is that so?_ Patrick texted back. He could feel himself smiling and he knew he looked like a lovestruck dumbass, grinning at his phone like an idiot, but he couldn’t help himself. But he was having fun, and for the first time in forever it was fun that was only tangentially work-related. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d flirted. Most of his recent flings had taken place in bars after a couple of drinks - flirting optional rather than prerequisite.  
  
_I know_ , Pete wrote. _I’m surprised too. But here we are._  
  
_I want it on record that this wasn’t my idea. I’d offer to cook but I’m only saying yes so I can hang out with Bowie_.  
  
Pete sent back a crying emoji. _Chicks only dig me for my dog_.  
  
_What can I say? It’s those baby blues. I gotta go, I’m nearly at my stop._  
  
_Cool. Bring me home that bacon, honey_.  
  
_You’re the worst_ , replied Patrick, still smiling. _I’ll text you later._

 

*

 

Patrick let himself into the restaurant through the back door and made his way upstairs to the break room, a dingy, airless little back room directly above the walk-in with a few battered lockers along one wall and an old couch up against another. It had been passed over during the owners’ last refurbishment, and countless pairs of feet had worn the carpet almost bare in places. There were a few people inside already, their voices carrying down the narrow stairwell. Patrick, suddenly paranoid that someone would just take one look at him and _know_ , had been hoping that he’d be able to slip in unnoticed, but no such luck. He’d barely got one foot through the door when Brendon pounced.  
  
“ _Patrick_ ,” he said, as if he’d been waiting for Patrick to show up. “Hey, why are you doing that with your face?”  
  
“What, smiling? Am I not allowed to smile now?” Patrick tried his best to wipe his expression clean.  
  
“You know you’re not,” said Brendon. “You only smile when we’re booked solid and you know how that stresses me out. Anyway, whatever. Drinks. Tonight. You’re coming, right?”  
  
Patrick tried not to cringe too visibly, knowing full well that Brendon would smell blood in the water and drag him out whether he wanted to go or not. He was exhausted; he couldn’t wait to go home and pass out and the restaurant wasn’t even open for lunch yet. “Sorry, B, not tonight. I’m not feeling so hot. Rain check?”  
  
Brendon recoiled visibly. “Oh, dude, should you even be here?” He jerked his head towards the sheet of paper taped up on the wall, the one with a hand-drawn picture of Grumpy Cat on it above the words _Keep Your Germs At Home, You Filthy Animals_. Someone had added a little chef’s hat on Grumpy Cat’s head. Patrick wasn’t sure that was a compliment. “I love you, man, but you know it’s Walking Dead rules. Greta’s gonna hose you down with bleach and kick your ass to the curb and I’m gonna help her do it.”  
  
Underneath the Grumpy Cat sign was another sheet of paper that read, in green Sharpie, _WALKING DEAD RULES: IF YOU HAVE REASON TO SUSPECT THAT A COLLEAGUE HAS BEEN INFECTED (cold, food poisoning, zombie bite, etc.), THEY ARE NOW DEAD TO YOU NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU ONCE LOVED THEM AND YOU HAVE A MORAL OBLIGATION TO REMOVE THEM FROM THE PREMISES WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE._  
  
Patrick grinned and squeezed Brendon’s shoulder. “Aw, what do you know? You guys _do_ listen to me when I tell you not to come in when you’re sick. Don’t worry about me, I’m good. It’s, uh… it’s a migraine or something, I just need to get some sleep.”  
  
Brendon, thankfully, seemed convinced, and moved on to his next victim. “Hey, Joe,” he called across the room. “What about you, buddy, are you coming out for drinks later?”  
  
“No can do,” said Joe, as he buttoned up his chef’s jacket. “Me and Frank have plans. It’s an exclusive kind of thing. Ball And Chain Club members only. You understand.”  
  
“Hey,” Greta said. She was squinting at her reflection in the smeared mirror on the wall as she scraped her hair back into a ponytail. “I thought you two called your group chat The Dad Bods.”  
  
“Yeah, we’ve rebranded.” Frank threw his deodorant back into his bag and slung it into his locker. “The whole dad bod thing was getting trendy, we didn’t want to give people the wrong idea.”  
  
Joe the sous-chef and Frank the pastry chef - formerly The Dad Bods, originally The Shotgun Wedding Club - had bonded over getting hitched young, and had formed a two-man secret club in response to the sheer volume of romantic drama that the rest of the staff seemed to have in their lives. Frank was a regular guest on Joe’s vlog, where he filmed himself cooking and eating gross retro food, but Patrick was pretty sure that all their secret club activities mainly involved a few beers and the occasional joint. He had it on good authority that Jamia and Marie’s group chat was called The Trophy Wives Club, and that their meetings also involved beers and the occasional joint.  
  
“I see.” Greta turned away from the mirror and raised an eyebrow. “But - ugh, guys, seriously? The Ball And Chain Club? Do your wives know you call it that?”  
  
Joe and Frank stood there in blank silence for a long moment, and then Joe said, “Oh! No, no. You’ve got it twisted, _we’re_ the ball and chain in this situation. Not the girls.”  
  
The others began to file out of the break room in ones and twos, either to start on the day’s kitchen prep or to set up the dining room. Brendon waited while Patrick changed into his white jacket and put his bag in a locker, studying him in a way that struck Patrick as all too knowing.  
  
“You sure you’re okay, man?”  
  
“Positive,” said Patrick, snapping his padlock shut. “I appreciate it, B, but I’m good. I’ll live.”  
  
Just then, Patrick heard footsteps outside. A moment later, Ryan’s lanky figure appeared in the doorway and he stopped dead, his foot hovering a few inches off the floor. He looked backwards and forwards between Patrick and Brendon, then turned around and vanished again like he thought he’d walked in on something.  
  
“Cutting it fine, Ryan,” Patrick called after Ryan’s retreating back, and then wished he hadn’t. Patrick never knew what to say to him. Ryan had been late twice already that week, and if it had been Brendon or any of the other front of house staff, Patrick would have taken them to one side and asked if there was anything up. Or maybe told Ray, the manager, to have a word with them. It wasn’t Patrick’s department, but he’d spent his teenage years working under a succession of shitty restaurant bosses whose philosophy for ensuring good customer service was just to keep on feeding an endless supply of bright-eyed college kids into the meat grinder of meagre hourly wages, comically cruel tipping-out policies and and erratic hours. Patrick tried his best to look out for the waitstaff, and most of them seemed to appreciate it, but Ryan was a difficult kid to read.  
  
“What the hell was that about?” Patrick muttered, more to himself than to Brendon. He could almost see Brendon’s hackles rising.  
  
“Fuck if I know,” Brendon said, repressively, and slammed his locker shut with unwarranted force. “C’mon, let’s get going.”  
  
Brendon had started working at the restaurant around the same time Ryan had. They’d been close - Patrick didn’t know for sure and he sure as hell wasn’t about to ask, but he had a feeling that there had been something going on between them - right up to the day when they’d both gone after the head waiter job and the owners had picked Brendon, and they seemed to have fallen out over it.  
  
The two of them headed back downstairs, and Brendon seemed to shake himself out of it. “Anyway,” he said. He had an unholy grin on his face, and Patrick thought, distantly, oh no. “Patrick Stump, is that a _hickey?_ ”  
  
“No,” said Patrick, automatically. Brendon reached out to tug Patrick’s collar down, and Patrick swatted at his hand. “Go away, this is workplace harassment.”  
  
“It is!” crowed Brendon. “Aren’t you getting kind of old for hickeys?”  
  
“Aren’t you getting kind of old to be calling them hickeys?” Patrick retorted, and Brendon clutched his chest like he’d been shot.  
  
“Seriously, though,” said Brendon, patting him on the shoulder. “It’s sweet. You deserve to have someone. I’m happy for you, man.”  
  
You wouldn’t be, thought Patrick. Not if you knew.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Okay, my turn,” said Pete. “Can I ask you a question? What do you do for fun?”
> 
> Patrick opened his mouth. He was about to list a bunch of things he did for fun - whatever, he was a normal person, he had hobbies - but then he stalled when he realized that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done any of them. “I don’t know,” said Patrick. “You, I guess.”
> 
> Pete snorted. “God, we need to get you out of that kitchen. I can’t be your only hobby.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thursday, everybody! Did you all have a good halloween? Big thanks to everyone who's left comments and kudos on this story so far, you guys are the best and we're so happy to have you along for the ride. We hope you enjoy this next chapter ♥

“This is your place, huh?” said Pete, looking around. They’d been… dating, or whatever it was they were doing, for over a month, but it was the first time Pete had seen Patrick’s apartment. Patrick’s place was a ride on the L and then a walk from the restaurant, while Pete’s apartment in Logan Square was only a few blocks away. Once, when cleanup had finished late and Patrick had been too tired to face the journey home, he’d walked to Pete’s and crawled into bed with him instead.  
  
Patrick locked the door behind him and glanced back over his shoulder, grinning. Pete had waited around to meet him behind the restaurant after closing time. Patrick wouldn’t have admitted it, but he’d been enjoying the sneaking around, the giddy feeling of having a secret and having someone to share it with. He’d missed knowing that there was someone thinking about him, missing him. He hadn’t thought he’d been lonely before - if anyone had asked him, he wouldn’t have thought twice before saying no - but he had been, desperately. “Yeah,” he said. “Surprised?”  
  
Patrick’s apartment didn’t have much of a kitchen, because he didn’t have much use for one. It was usually past midnight when he got home, and cooking was the last thing on his mind during his precious downtime. The problem was that people just kept on giving him things like the ice cream machine and the pasta maker and the little blowtorch for crème brulée and the frighteningly high-tech blender and the _mouli-legumes_ and the wine aerator and the gnocchi paddle and the vegetable spiralizer and the microplane grater and the breadmaker and the complete sushi kit and the citrus juicer with the special attachment to make fancy twists of lemon peel for cocktails. Patrick didn’t have the heart to tell them that he never used any of it. He’d been covertly selling it on eBay for years, because he just didn’t have the space to keep it all. Patrick lived on late night takeout and leftovers from the restaurant and the occasional secret, shameful McDonalds, and now that Pete was here, Patrick was fervently grateful that he’d spent an entire morning last week throwing out all the incriminating evidence.  
  
“Not really,” said Pete. “I know how it goes. I was out of the game for two years before I started cooking for myself again.” Just then, he spotted the guitar propped against the wall. “Oh, shit, is this yours? Do you play?” He picked it up and gave it an experimental strum. It made a sad, out of tune twanging noise, and they both winced. “Ouch.”  
  
“I, uh… don’t play much these days,” said Patrick, unnecessarily. “It needs new strings, I keep meaning to change them.” The guitar had been sitting out and gathering dust for months, and the calluses on Patrick’s fingertips were long gone. Patrick knew he ought to put it back in its case and put it away in the back of his closet, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. It felt too much like admitting defeat. He barely ever played anymore as it was; if the guitar was out of sight and out of mind, he probably wouldn’t pick it up again until he retired. Patrick didn’t often look up from his work for long enough to see it, but when he did, he was always vaguely unpleasantly surprised to see that there seemed to be a little bit less of him than there had been before. Maybe one day he’d look up and find that there was nothing left of him at all, just the job, expanded until it filled out all the space he’d once taken up. “C’mon,” he said, around a yawn. “I don’t know about you, but I need a shower. I smell like kitchen.”  
  
Patrick was so, so tired. It was a slow, seductive, 4am kind of tired, the kind of tired that rose through him feet-first like tea through a sugar cube and normally caused him to move very slowly and deliberately lest he throw his cell phone in the trash and try to call a cab from the empty veggie burger wrapper in his other hand. He led Pete down the hallway, then pushed the bathroom door open and heard Pete let out a low whistle.  
  
When he’d started apartment-hunting four years ago, Patrick had known exactly what he was looking for. It had taken him months, but he’d found it. He hadn’t wanted a big kitchen - he’d been working in restaurants for long enough by then to know that he’d barely use it - but the bathroom was what had sold him on this place. He knew he’d overpaid like hell for the rain shower and the enormous tub, but he didn’t care. After a punishing thirteen-hour shift, being able to sink up to his neck into a hot bath was the only thing that made him feel human again.  
  
“Oh, _shit_ ,” said Pete, grinning. “Are you kidding me, Patrick? This place is insane. I can’t decide whether I want you to fuck me in the shower or the tub first.”  
  
“Alright,” Patrick said, as he reached into the shower and turned the water on. “But when you break your neck you’re calling 911 and explaining that you’re the asshole who thought shower sex was a good idea.”  
  
“Killjoy.” Pete pulled his shirt over his head and let it fall to the floor. He was golden all over, lean and tanned and tattooed. Patrick wanted to pin him down and lick the necklace of thorns, fuzzy around the edges with age, and the strange winged heart with the skull inside it that peeked out over the waistband of his jeans. Maybe in the morning, Patrick thought. When he wasn’t half asleep on his feet.  
  
Pete stripped the rest of his clothes off and Patrick wriggled out of his jeans and kicked them away, too tired to worry about the fact that the harsh lights didn’t exactly flatter him. He knew he looked soft and pale and blue-veined, like the underbelly of something, but Pete was still looking at him like he wanted to eat him alive. Patrick hadn’t yet stopped marveling at the fact that Pete had wanted him enough to chase him, let alone the fact that Pete now knew just what a neurotic, workaholic disaster he was and hadn’t gotten bored with him yet. When the steam had started to spill over the top of the glass door, Patrick pulled it open and stepped into the shower. Pete followed him in, and then made a pornographic noise of delight.  
  
“Oh, fuck,” he said. “Patrick, holy shit, why do you ever leave this thing? I’d just live in here.”  
  
Patrick hummed in agreement. He stood still for a long moment, basking in the warmth of the water. He could feel the heat loosening the knots in his muscles. Everything had gone slow and sleepy, like a record playing at half-speed. Time had turned syrupy, sleep clinging to him in sticky loops. When the water was finally starting to go cold and Patrick sagged backwards against Pete’s chest, Pete laughed softly in his ear and said, “Alright, alright. Let’s get you to bed.”  
  
Pete turned the water off and Patrick let himself be pushed gently out of the shower. Pete stepped out too, dripping water on the tiles, and handed Patrick a towel. His limbs felt impossibly heavy and as distant as the moon as he dried himself off, yawning and clumsy.  
  
“Sorry,” he mumbled, as Pete planted one warm hand on the small of his back and gently nudged him out into the hallway. “I know I’ve been a pretty disappointing date tonight.”  
  
Pete huffed out a laugh and ran his fingers through Patrick’s damp hair. “Yeah, you fiendish tease. Semi-comatose, that’s how I like my men. Nothing gets me going like someone falling asleep on my dick.”  
  
“Fuck you,” said Patrick, thickly, around another yawn. He pushed the bedroom door open and sat down heavily on the edge of the mattress. “You wait. I’m just gonna rest my eyes for five minutes and then I’m gonna blow your goddamn mind.”  
  
“Sure you are,” Pete said, as he climbed into the bed and pulled the covers up over them both. There was a note of fondness in his voice that Patrick felt as a tug somewhere in his chest.  
  
“I mean it. Five minutes, I swear.”  
  
“I know you do.” Pete spooned up behind Patrick and draped one arm over Patrick’s waist. “Go to sleep, Romeo.”

 

*

 

Patrick woke up slow and easy, the world filtering gently through the warm fog of sleep. He could hear Pete moving around in the kitchen, singing along tunelessly to the radio and swearing at the shitty coffee maker Patrick still hadn’t gotten around to upgrading. Patrick sat up, yawning and rubbing his eyes, and padded out into the kitchen. Pete was standing in front of the open fridge, wearing yesterday’s boxers and Patrick’s giant Cubs shirt. Patrick bit his lip, trying and failing to stop the dumb, dopey smile he could feel spreading across his face.  
  
“Hey,” he said, his voice coming out rough and sleepy. “Morning.”  
  
Pete looked back over his shoulder and grinned. “Morning to you too. That’s some bedhead you’ve got going on there. I was going to make you breakfast, but, uh…” he gestured to the empty fridge.  
  
Patrick ran his hand through his hair, which he was sure was sticking up crazily on one side and squashed flat on the other where he’d fallen asleep on it while it was wet. “Yeah,” he said. “I wasn’t kidding when I said I didn’t cook.” And, if he was honest, the state of his love life being what it was, he didn’t usually have to worry about people seeing the state of his fridge anyway. “Sorry. You found the coffee maker, right? There’s a convenience store, like, a block away. I could probably run out and get some stuff and make pancakes or something, if you want to eat.”  
  
Pete made a face. “Man, if only. I’m working later, gotta stay hungry.”  
  
Patrick raised an eyebrow. “Who’s in the firing line this time?” he said. Either they knew Pete was coming and they were making frantic last-minute preparations, or they were blissfully unaware and they weren’t going to know what had hit them. Whoever they were, Patrick didn’t envy them.  
  
“Italian place, over in University Village,” said Pete. He didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic. “I’m taking Mikey out for lunch, my neighbor’s looking after Bowie.”  
  
“Damn. That bad?”  
  
“Nah, I’m sure it’s fine. That’s, uh… kind of the problem. I’ve actually been thinking about quitting.”  
  
Patrick blinked, surprised. “Really?” he said. “Why? You’re getting paid to write about food. You’re at the top of your game.”  
  
Pete made a face. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s been… what, ten years and change now? And don’t get me wrong, it’s been good to me, but it’s not really writing anymore. It’s basically just Mad Libs. Same template, different words. It’s easier when it’s really good or really bad, there’s more to talk about, but most of the time I’m just coming up with new ways to say it didn’t suck.”  
  
“Sure. So why don’t you just quit?”  
  
Pete laughed, that awful, obnoxious laugh that Patrick was reluctantly beginning to find horribly endearing. “If only,” he said. “It’s like the mob, it’s not that easy to get out.”  
  
Patrick cracked up too. “The _mob?_ Pete, you write for a newspaper. What’s the worst they can do to you? Dead horse in your bed?”  
  
“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,” rasped Pete, in what Patrick thought was probably supposed to be an Al Pacino impression.  
  
Patrick rolled his eyes, but he was still laughing. “Alright,” he said. “Say you quit, what would you do? Go back to working in a kitchen?” He knew Pete had to be making good money at the Tribune, but not retire-before-forty kind of money.  
  
Pete grimaced. “God, no, that was a disaster. It turns out that being fucked in the head doesn’t make you the best fit for a job where you’re being yelled at for twelve hours a day. I should’ve quit much sooner than I did, I stuck it out for three years because I’m a stubborn asshole. Okay - don’t laugh,” he said, and Patrick solemnly crossed his heart. “I’m actually thinking about giving up the critic thing and just… writing.”  
  
“No shit,” said Patrick, grinning. “That’s awesome. What kind of writer would you be?”  
  
“I’ve been working on a book,” Pete said. “Like a novel. Kind of a murder-mystery thing. I keep thinking about trying to get it published but it’s pretty daunting, you know, putting something out there when you’ve made a career talking shit about people.”  
  
Patrick laughed. “You’ve made your bed, man, you’ve gotta lie in it.”  
  
Pete shrugged, but he looked pleased. “Maybe,” he said. He picked up his coffee and took a sip, looking thoughtfully at Patrick over the rim of the cup. “Okay, my turn. Can I ask you a question?”  
  
“Shoot.”  
  
“What do you do for fun?”  
  
Patrick opened his mouth. He was about to list a bunch of things he did for fun - whatever, he was a normal person, he had hobbies - but then he stalled when he realized that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done any of them. “I don’t know,” said Patrick. “You, I guess.”  
  
Pete snorted. “God, we need to get you out of that kitchen. I can’t be your only hobby.”  
  
“Fuck you,” said Patrick, mildly. “I don’t have time for hobbies, I have a real job.”  
  
It was true, sort of. There never was time, but Patrick knew people who worked as many hours as he did in a week and somehow still managed to do other things, like Joe with his vlog or Brendon with his theatre group. There was a feeling that Patrick got from time to time, and he’d been getting it more and more often since he’d started seeing Pete. It didn’t feel like standing at the crossroads - not yet, at least - but it felt like seeing the sign for the intersection at the side of the road. Patrick knew he could keep on going for now, keep building on the name he’d made for himself, maybe open his own place sometime, probably pick up a Michelin star along the way. But he’d burn out one day, maybe fifteen or twenty years further down the line, and then what? He’d have more than enough money put away by then to retire comfortably, but at this rate he was going to be staring down the barrel of a whole lot of nothing when he finally bowed out. He knew exactly how lucky he’d been, but his job left him with no energy for anything else, no time for friends who didn’t work in restaurants and bars. Perhaps it was time for a change, but to what? Food was the only thing Patrick knew how to do.  
  
“Easy,” said Pete, evidently noticing the expression Patrick’s face. “I’m not asking for the meaning of life, I’m just saying, you know. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you relax.”  
  
“Guilty.” Patrick grinned sheepishly. “ADHD. And I’m kind of a control freak, I don’t know if you’ve noticed. I’m not really wired for chilling out.”  
  
Pete shook his head. “We’re gonna have to work on that. Otherwise you’re headed for a heart attack before you hit forty, which would be a criminal loss to the Chicago culinary scene.”  
  
Patrick grinned, cocking his hip against the counter. “Yeah? You gonna help me relax, Pete?”  
  
Pete rolled his eyes. “I mean you need someone to tell you when you’re looking a little crazy and pin you to the couch for a couple of days in front of some shitty TV.”  
  
Patrick thought about it. “I could go for half of that,” he said.  
  
“Ha ha,” said Pete, dryly, and then, “Oh, hey, is that your phone ringing?”  
  
It was. Patrick could hear his cell phone’s chirpy factory default ringtone, and it took the two of them a minute of frantic searching before Pete finally found it in the pocket of Patrick’s jeans, which were still where he’d left them on the bathroom floor the night before.  
  
“Thanks,” said Patrick, distractedly, taking the phone from Pete and frowning down at the screen, which read _Joe Trohman_.  Patrick hit the accept call button and raised the phone to his ear. “Hey, Joe,” he said, grinning as he felt Pete sneaking up behind him and wrapping his arms around Patrick’s waist. Patrick knew Pete would have to leave soon, but maybe he’d be able to drag Pete back to bed for a little while. “What’s up, is everything alright?”  
  
“Okay,” said Joe. As usual, Patrick could hear faint yelling in the background. It was a kid thing, apparently. “Okay. Don’t freak out, but I just spoke to my buddy Matt.”  
  
Patrick was doing his best, but it wasn’t easy to concentrate with Pete pressed against his back, hot and close, mouthing at his neck. “Your buddy Matt?” he said, trying in vain to remember when Joe had mentioned a friend called Matt and what he might have to do with Patrick. “Why would I freak out about that?”  
  
Joe huffed impatiently on the other end of the line and Patrick pictured him blowing his hair out of his eyes. “My buddy Matt? Who used to date that chick whose cousin goes to the same tattoo guy as Nate Novarro? Nate Novarro who knows--”  
  
“Vicky at the Tribune,” Patrick breathed, and _now_ he was freaking out. At his back, Pete went completely still. “Oh, shit.”  
  
“Yeah. It’s okay, we’ve got some time, but I thought you should know.”  
  
Patrick closed his eyes and tried to remember to breathe. “Alright. I’ll, uh, see what I can find out. Thanks, Joe.” He hung up the phone and turned around to face Pete. “Something you want to tell me?” he said. “Christ, Pete, how long have you known?”  
  
Pete held his hands up. “A couple of weeks,” he admitted. “Vicky wanted someone to go in and do a piece on your winter menu.”  
  
“So why didn’t you _tell_ me?” spluttered Patrick. “It didn’t strike you as, oh, I don’t know, the kind of thing I might have been interested to know?”  
  
“I was going to tell you,” said Pete, unhappily. “Honestly, I was. I just kept putting it off because I knew you’d freak out. I was scared you’d decide you couldn’t do this and tell me you were done with me.” His voice got quieter and quieter as he spoke, so that by the time he’d finished Patrick was straining to hear him.  
  
Patrick sighed, all the anger draining out of him like water from a bathtub. He could hardly get mad about that. If Pete had told him earlier, Patrick knew that there was a non-zero chance that he might well have panicked and broken things off, just like Pete had feared. “I’m not done with you,” he said. “I’m not - I don’t _want_ to be done with you, but do you honestly think you could be impartial if you had to go in there and write us up now? I don’t think you could. I don’t think _I_ could. God, this is exactly why chefs aren’t supposed to fuck critics.” Patrick pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to remember to breathe.  
  
“Hey. Hey, look at me.” Gently, Pete tugged Patrick’s hand down and pulled him in for a hug. “Nothing’s fucked up. It’s all under control. All you’ve got to do is your job and pretend like you don’t know shit. I’ll tell Vicky I don’t want to do it and she’ll hand it off to someone else, I’ll see if I can find out who she’s sending. It’s gonna be fine.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brendon’s text read, _we all know yr getting lucky with yr mystery man. b safe make good choices see u tomorrow xxx_
> 
> By then, Patrick was pretty sure everyone knew that he had someone. In the last three days, no fewer than four members of his staff had attempted to strike up casual conversations with him about his love life and he’d had to scramble to deflect them.
> 
> “Damn right you are,” said Pete, reading over Patrick’s shoulder. He was plastered against Patrick’s back, hot and close. He kissed the place where Patrick’s neck met his shoulder, and Patrick could feel him smiling. “C’mon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's an extra long one this weeks, folks! Either we're sorry or you're welcome (please delete as appropriate). Fasten your seatbelts and hold on tight, shit's about to get real.

“Joe?” called Brendon, dodging around another waiter and ducking into the kitchen. “The guy at table nine wants ranch dressing.”  
  
Joe looked up from the plate he’d been stacking with slices of lacy tempura pumpkin. “You’d better be screwing with me, Urie.”  
  
Brendon shook his head. “Ranch. He was, like, _very_ clear about that. Is that even… do we even have ranch? Are you gonna cry?”  
  
“No, no,” said Joe, a note of hysteria in his voice. “It’s a twenty-five dollar _niçoise_ , but sure, bring the man some ranch, he obviously knows what he’s doing.”  
  
“Ten four, copy that. Ranch dressing for the depraved lunatic at table nine.”  
  
“Hey,” said Patrick. “Easy. No talking shit about customers during business hours, please. Even when they ask for ranch.”  
  
Brendon rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. We’ll put a pin in that and later on you can tell us all about what you’d like to do to people who put ranch on sashimi grade tuna. Oh, and your guy’s here, the one you told me to watch out for. Table four, tall dark and handsome.” He waggled his eyebrows.  
  
“McCoy,” said Patrick. He took a deep, steadying breath. He’d spent the last two weeks trying to wring every last detail about McCoy’s likes and dislikes out of Pete. This whole thing had been planned like a military campaign. They were ready. “He’s with the Tribune. No getting into it with Ryan tonight and no trying to slip McCoy your number when he asks for the check, alright?”  
  
“I won’t if Ryan doesn’t,” said Brendon, archly. “Anyway, that happened _one time_. And it was, like, two years ago, you’ve got to stop bringing it up. Although if I was ever going to pull that shit again, it’d be tonight. Have you _seen_ McCoy? He’s _beautiful_. But fine, I’ll tell front of house.”  
  
“Thanks, B. Alright, everybody,” Patrick called, raising his voice. Several people looked up from what they were doing. “Code red, we’ve got a critic on our hands. Make me proud.”

 

*

 

“Good job tonight, guys,” said Patrick. The last party had left and the doors were locked, and Ray had given them the green light to shut down the kitchen. “That was rough, you all killed it.”  
  
In addition to McCoy’s table and the usual Friday night craziness, they’d had two food bloggers in and a party of eight that had become a party of fifteen just as the appetizers arrived. They’d managed to keep everything running smoothly - on the surface, at least. Behind the scenes, it had been one of the most frantic dinner services Patrick could remember.  
  
“Damn fucking right I did,” said Frank. Just before nine, they’d been so desperate for an extra pair of hands that Patrick had promised Frank his immortal soul if he’d step in as a line cook for an hour or two. “I haven’t done that since I was twenty-two. Let me tell you, it’s no goddamn better at thirty-six.”  
  
Frank was Mise En Place’s pastry chef, but he’d started working in restaurant kitchens as a dishwasher and busboy as a teenager. He’d worked his way up to sous-chef in an Italian place back in New Jersey before moving to Paris to train as a patissier in his twenties. He still spoke some French, although it was with a strong Jersey accent and it was mostly colorful profanity and technical baking terms.  
  
“You’re a saint,” said Patrick, gravely. “Just heroic, the way you stepped up and, you know, _did your job_. A real inspiration to us all.”  
  
Frank grinned and flipped him off.  
  
Frank’s bellyaching aside, spirits were high and cleanup went quickly. Everyone had relaxed now the pressure had eased up, and Patrick was half-listening to three different arguments about which bar to hit later as they all trudged up to the break room to freshen up and grab their bags and jackets.  
  
“You’re coming, right?” said Brendon, as he zipped up his coat.  
  
“Yeah, of course,” said Patrick. His shoulders were sore, the muscles stiff and aching with all the tension he’d been holding there all night. “You guys go on ahead, I’ll come and join you. I just… need a minute. It’s been a hell of a night.”  
  
“Are you sure?” said Brendon, hovering by the door of the break room. People were leaving already, talking and laughing as they headed out for the dive bar a couple of blocks away. “We’ll wait, it’s cool.”  
  
“No, no, you go. Go and have fun, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”  
  
“Fine,” said Brendon. “But if you’re not there in half an hour I’m coming back to drag you to the bar myself. You look like a man who needs a frozen margarita.”  
  
With that, he threw his enormous scarf around his neck and made his way down the stairs after Spencer and Greta. Patrick listened to their footsteps retreating down the stairs, their voices trailing behind them. When the back door slammed shut behind them, Patrick finally exhaled. It was over. He just needed to catch his breath, and then he’d go and join the others. Patrick sat down heavily on the ancient, battered couch, enjoying the strangeness of the silent, empty restaurant. Just a few more minutes, and he’d be--he stopped dead, listening. Someone was knocking at the back door already. Patrick groaned, and started down the stairs. “Brendon, you asshole, is that you? It’s been, like, five minutes. I swear to god, if you’ve forgotten your phone again I’m going to nail the damn thing to your hand.”  
  
But it wasn’t Brendon. Instead, Pete stood in the doorway, grinning. “Hey,” he said, and wrapped his arms around Patrick.  
  
“Hey,” Patrick murmured, tucking his face into Pete’s neck and holding on tight. “What are you doing here?”  
  
“Thought I’d come and surprise you. I knew you’d be the last guy out, I waited on the other side of the street like a total creep until everyone else had gone. How did it go?”  
  
Patrick hummed contentedly. “Fine. He seemed happy, I don’t think he’s going to trash us. We couldn’t have done it without your help, though.”  
  
Pete laughed, soft and pleased, and ran his hand up Patrick’s back. “See? I come with perks.”  
  
Patrick grinned. “Oh yeah?”  
  
Suddenly they were moving backwards as Pete pushed them both into the kitchen and backed Patrick up against the door of the walk-in. Patrick could feel the cold air from the open back door on his face, but he was hot all over, burning up. He didn’t fight it, just curled his hands into Pete’s hair and pulled him closer. He spread his legs a little, slotting Pete’s thigh in between his own. This was easily the stupidest thing he’d ever done, but just then, he could more easily have grown wings than stopped. Pete’s hands were all over him and his mouth was hot and greedy and Patrick was still sparking with adrenaline, running at double speed. Pete ground against him and Patrick whined, kissing him harder.  
  
“Fuck,” whispered Pete into the skin under Patrick’s ear, making him shiver. “You’re something, you know that?”  
  
Patrick grinned. “So are you. You make me crazy, Wentz. I was all ready to go out and have a good time with my guys and now here you are and all I can think about is going home with you.”  
  
“So come home with me,” murmured Pete.  
  
“I _can’t_ ,” said Patrick, tipping his head back and laughing. “Pete, I can’t, I told them all I’d come to the bar.”  
  
“So text them.” Pete dropped a trail of featherlight kisses in a line down Patrick’s neck. “Forge a doctor’s note, tell them your dog ate your homework, whatever.”  
  
Patrick hesitated. He could feel his resolve crumbling in the face of Pete’s pleading eyes and his hands on Patrick’s hips. It wasn’t as if he was standing someone up, he reasoned. There was a whole group of them at the bar, he wouldn’t ruin anyone’s evening by not showing up. Pete was grinning as he watched all this play out on Patrick’s face, and, finally, Patrick said, “Fine. Fine. Are you happy?”  
  
“Delighted,” said Pete, solemnly. He was still close enough to kiss, close enough that Patrick could see the flecks of gold in his eyes.  
  
Unable to resist, Patrick closed the space between them and kissed him, shivering when he felt Pete’s mouth open up under his own. “Okay,” he said. “Let me grab my things, they’re just upstairs. C’mon.”  
  
He led Pete up to the break room, threw on his jacket and pulled out his phone. _Gonna have to bail on the bar, too tired tonight - drinks on me next time, sorry_ , he typed, checking the time and figuring that as long as Brendon looked at his phone in the next five minutes or so he’d see Patrick’s text and save himself a trip back to the empty restaurant.  
  
“So this is where the magic happens, huh?” said Pete, wandering over to the wall where there were several prominent restaurant critics’ photos taped up along with sticky notes detailing their names, pet peeves, seating preferences, regular dining companions and probable food and drink orders. “I gotta say, I’m kind of insulted.”  
  
Patrick rolled his eyes and slung his bag over his shoulder. “Oh, come on, you’ve worked in restaurants. You must have seen a wall like this before.”  
  
“Sure I have. I’m talking about the picture of me, who picked that out? It’s gotta be ten years old. 2007 didn’t look good on me.”  
  
“Company policy,” said Patrick, tucking his hand into Pete’s and tugging him away. “Every time you say something shitty about us we replace your picture with a slightly worse one.”  
  
“Aw, come on,” Pete protested, as they made their way back downstairs. “That’s not fair, I’ve never been anything but complimentary about this place. Almost.”  
  
“You know we read your reviews, right?” said Patrick, pausing at the bottom of the stairs to check his phone.  Brendon had replied, and when Patrick opened the message, it read, _we all know yr getting lucky with yr mystery man. b safe make good choices see u tomorrow xxx  
  
_ By then, Patrick was pretty sure everyone knew that he had someone. In the last three days, no fewer than four members of his staff had attempted to strike up casual conversations with him about his love life and he’d had to scramble to deflect them.  
  
“Fuck yeah, you are,” said Pete, reading over Patrick’s shoulder. He was plastered against Patrick’s back, hot and close. He kissed the place where Patrick’s neck met his shoulder, and Patrick could feel him smiling. “C’mon.”  
  
Operating on pure muscle memory, Patrick walked a final circuit around the kitchen, making sure everything was in its place and ready for lunch service tomorrow. Once he and Pete were out and he’d locked the back door behind them, he glanced up to see Pete watching him with a little secret smile on his face. “What?” he said, and he could feel himself smiling back.  
  
“Nothing. You’re a different person in there, you know that?”  
  
“Oh yeah?” Patrick took a slow, deliberate step into Pete’s space. He wanted to kiss him so badly he could taste it, his palms tingling with the urge to reach out and reel him in.  
  
“Yeah,” said Pete. He didn’t step back. “You get all… competent. I’m into it.”  
  
Patrick laughed. “That’s me. Totally competent. Not at all freaking out about three different things at once and having a mental breakdown in the walk-in.”  
  
“Maybe so,” said Pete, reaching out and playing with the zipper on Patrick’s jacket. “But you’ve got this attitude. Like, I’m the boss, don’t fuck with me.” He grinned. “It’s a turn-on.”  
  
“You dork,” said Patrick. “Do I turn you on, Pete?”  
  
He’d been playing it for laughs, but he’d gotten lost somewhere along the way and it came out softer than he’d meant it to, dark and intimate. He saw Pete’s throat move as he swallowed, picked out by the orange light of the streetlamps that reached down the alleyway.  
  
“You asshole,” said Pete. “You know you do. C’mon, let’s go home.”

 

*

 

The walk back to Pete’s apartment had never felt so long, although it would have been shorter if they hadn’t both kept on laughing and trying to stick their cold hands in each other’s back pockets. Patrick couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt like this, light-headed and lit up from within. When they finally stumbled into Pete’s apartment, both giggling, Patrick barely had time to drop his bag and his jacket on the floor before Pete was pulling him down onto the couch and kissing him, deep and dirty and open-mouthed.  
  
“God, you looked so good, I would have fucked you right there in the restaurant,” said Patrick, breathless already, and Pete made the most incredible noise. Patrick pulled back to look at him. “ _Oh_. Yeah?”  
  
Pete’s eyes were fever-bright, his cheeks flushed pink. Patrick could see the dark roots of his hair, his eyelashes, the crows’ feet at the corners of his eyes, and his brain kept getting snagged on these little details like he was trying to fix Pete in his memory forever, just like this.  
  
“What, like you’re surprised?” said Pete. He arched upwards and gasped when Patrick ground down harder against him, and pressed his mouth to Patrick’s neck for a biting kiss.  
  
“Let me tell you what I think,” murmured Patrick, testing a hunch. “I think I could have taken you upstairs to my office and fucked you right there and you would have let me.”  
  
Pete moaned, his hips straining. “Let you?” he said. “I would have begged.”  
  
“Even if there were people around? Even if someone could have heard or walked in on us?” Patrick wasn’t usually one for dirty talk - he was too self-conscious, and prone to overthinking what was coming out of his mouth and getting awkward - but Pete shuddered underneath him and Patrick let himself get swept up in the moment. “Fuck, you would. Take your pants off, baby.”  
  
Pete’s head fell back against the couch cushion and his fingers dug into Patrick’s hips. “Shit,” he muttered, and then opened his eyes, grinning. “I’m too old to get fucked on a couch, you wanna move this party to the bedroom?”  
  
Patrick laughed and dragged him to his feet and they made their haphazard way to the bedroom, stopping every few paces to push each other up against the wall. A couple of the framed posters had very narrow escapes, as did one or two of the more precariously balanced books on the shelves. When they made it to Pete’s bedroom, he kicked the door open and pulled Patrick inside. Patrick backed him up until they hit the bed and Pete sat back, legs spread, propped up on his elbows and looking at Patrick with the kind of hungry intensity that had nothing at all to do with food. Patrick’s heart was fluttering and his hands felt shaky. He followed Pete down onto the bed and kissed him, messy and desperate, feeling Pete’s hips moving against him.  
  
“God, that was so dumb,” he whispered, biting at Pete’s neck. “Shit, what if we’d been caught?”  
  
Pete whined and Patrick caught his breath as he fumbled between them to undo Pete’s belt. “Anyone could have walked in and seen us,” he said, shoving Pete’s jeans down far enough to slide a hand into his boxers. Pete was hard and leaking already, his hips jerking against Patrick’s hand.  
  
“Oh, fuck,” Pete breathed, his voice shivery, and Patrick moaned.  
  
“God, you’re--okay, okay. Let’s get those off, huh?”  
  
Pete lifted his hips and let Patrick pull his jeans off and kick them away. There was a wet spot on the front of his boxers already, just from a little making out and some dirty talk. Patrick reached down and squeezed Pete’s dick through his shorts and drank in the gorgeous, needy noise he made. He was stretched out, the thick, hard line of his cock obvious through the fabric, pushing up against Patrick’s hands like he couldn’t stop himself. “What would you have done, if we’d stayed?” said Patrick, softly. “What do you want?”  
  
Pete shuddered, his hips bucking into Patrick’s hand. There were two spots of color burning high on his cheekbones and his eyes were bright. “I’d have got on my knees,” he said, hoarsely. “Sucked you off. God, I wanted to. So bad.”  
  
Patrick felt his dick twitch at the thought. “Yeah? Me in my desk chair with my legs spread and you on the floor, sucking my cock?”  
  
Pete whimpered, his head moving in a jerky nod. This wouldn’t normally have been Patrick’s thing, but, god, watching Pete get off on it was hot. Patrick ran his thumb across Pete’s plush lower lip, then inhaled sharply when Pete let his mouth fall open in a clear invitation. Patrick slipped his thumb into Pete’s mouth and Pete sucked it in eagerly, working his tongue against the pad of it, and Patrick’s dick twitched as he remembered how it had felt when Pete had pulled the same trick while he was blowing Patrick last week.  
  
“Yeah?” said Patrick, trusting that Pete would tell him if he pushed too far. “Even though you knew anyone could have walked in and seen you like that, down on your knees for me, taking my dick? They would’ve known exactly what you like.” He pulled his thumb back out of Pete’s mouth, leaving a wet stripe over his lower lip, his jaw, down his neck.  
  
“Yeah,” Pete said, his breath hitching prettily. “Fuck yeah. God, can you--”  
  
“Yeah, yeah.” Patrick kissed him again, biting at his lip just to hear him moan. “Whatever you want, c’mon.”  
  
Pete arched up into Patrick’s hands. “Fuck me? I’ve been thinking about it all day.”  
  
Patrick closed his eyes and counted in his head until he was sure he wouldn’t just snap and rut against Pete’s leg until he came. “God, yes,” he said. He tugged Pete’s boxers down and then sat back to fumble with his own belt. “Like I’d say no to that.”  
  
Pete laughed and sat up, peeling his shirt off and fishing a bottle of lube out of the nightstand. “You’d definitely say no to fucking me in the restaurant for real.”  
  
Patrick pulled his own shirt over his head and tossed it away. “You bet I would, I like our hygiene rating the way it--oh, fuck.” He stopped dead halfway through wriggling out of his jeans to stare as Pete slowly pressed a finger into himself, his teeth sunk into his lower lip. For a long moment, all Patrick could do was watch, his brain totally derailed by how blindingly hot that was.  
  
Pete looked up at him and grinned. “You wanna come down here and give me a hand, or are you too busy enjoying the show?”  
  
Patrick leant down to kiss him, mainly to stop him talking, then reached for the lube and slicked up his fingers while Pete watched, biting his lip again.  
  
“Fuck,” he said. “God, I love your hands.”  
  
“You sweet talker, you,” said Patrick, grinning. His hands had been sliced and burnt and scalded and accidentally shut in drawers - they weren’t pretty, but he still knew how to use them. “Could’ve done this in my office, too,” he said, thoughtfully, pushing a finger in alongside Pete’s and savoring the way Pete’s back arched, the tattoo on his belly stretching and dipping where it pulled taut over the cut of his hip.  
  
“God.” It was quiet, barely a breath.  
  
“Yeah, open you up for me. You’d have to be quiet, though. Lots of people around. And those walls are thin, they’d hear you.” Patrick crooked his finger until Pete’s whole body jerked and he gasped, sharp and loud. “You think you could do that? Keep quiet with my fingers in you, stretching you out?”  
  
Pete’s breath caught on a little gasp. “Oh, god, no way. Fuck, I’d try, but--oh god, your hands. And the whole time I’d be thinking about how it’d be your cock next.”  
  
Patrick shivered. God, Pete was going to be the death of him. “Alright,” he said, running his other hand up Pete’s inner thigh and feeling the muscles flex under his fingers. He was so sensitive, so responsive to the lightest touch. “Alright, let me--there you go, that’s it.”  
  
Pete eased his own finger out and Patrick slid another one of his own in to take its place. He could feel Pete bearing down, rocking his hips minutely against Patrick’s hand.  
  
Patrick rested his cheek against Pete’s leg, devouring him with his eyes. Pete’s skin was covered with a faint sheen of sweat, his tattoos shining like wet ink and shifting every time he gasped and ground down onto Patrick’s fingers. He pushed a third finger in and Pete made a high, sharp noise, his feet slipping on the bedsheets.  
  
“Oh, fuck, fuck, that’s--feels really good.”  
  
“Yeah?” Patrick sank his fingers in deeper and Pete nodded frantically, gasping for air.  
  
“So good. Can’t wait for you to fuck me, god, it’s always fucking fantastic.”  
  
Patrick grinned, feeling dizzy with it all. Before Pete had crashed into his life, he’d forgotten how head-spinningly, brain-meltingly hot it was to be wanted so badly. Pete was hot and tight and slick, his hips working like he couldn’t get enough, his dick hard and flushed where it was resting against his stomach. “Maybe if you were doing a good job of keeping quiet I’d get my mouth on your dick as well,” he said. “Find out just how loud I could make you.”  
  
“Oh, fuck.” Pete’s voice broke and his cock bobbed against his belly. “God, please.”  
  
“Yeah?” said Patrick, lowering his head to run his tongue up the length of Pete’s cock, feeling it jump as he traced the vein. He felt saturated with Pete, with the desperate little sounds he was making and the smell of his skin and the velvety heat of his cock. “You’d have to try. Hand over your mouth, maybe.”  
  
Pete’s laugh was rusty. “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen-- _oh_.” his voice trailed off into a whine when Patrick wrapped his mouth around his cock, hot and wet and as tight as Patrick could manage. His brain was shooting sparks in all directions and his own dick was almost painfully hard, but all he could think about was winding Pete up until he broke. He sank down deep, tasting precome. He hollowed his cheeks and crooked his fingers again and Pete made a beautiful, broken-open noise. “Fucking love your mouth, too,” he said, weakly.  
  
If Patrick’s mouth hadn’t been full he would have said that he loved this too, feeling Pete unraveling under him. Pete’s cock was hot and heavy on his tongue and Patrick could feel him working to keep his hips still and not fuck Patrick’s mouth. He felt Pete’s hands moving over his hair, sliding down his nose and over his cheek.  
  
“God, Patrick. C’mon, please, you gotta fuck me.” Pete hissed through his teeth when Patrick’s fingers twitched. “If you keep going like this the show’s gonna be over real fast.”  
  
Patrick pulled off his cock and let it slip out of his mouth, wet and hard and flushed dark, but he kept his fingers inside Pete, working slow and lazy just to keep him on the edge. “You got condoms?” Patrick said, propping his chin on Pete’s hipbone.  
  
Pete laughed, breathless and shaky, as he reached into the nightstand. “There you go. It’s my lucky night.”  
  
“And mine,” Patrick murmured, grinning, sliding his fingers out and watching Pete shudder at the loss, clenching around nothing. Patrick wiped his fingers clean and tore open the foil packet with his teeth, then rolled the condom on with clumsy hands and settled himself back between Pete’s legs. God, he looked gorgeous, naked and desperate and all spread out for Patrick. He reached down and lined himself up, bracing his other hand against Pete’s hip, and exhaled slowly. “You good?” he said. “Fuck, you look--you’re gonna feel amazing, I can’t wait.”  
  
Pete smiled, his burnt sugar eyes blown wide and dark, burning into Patrick. “So do it.”  
  
Patrick pressed forward, pushing into Pete in one slow, steady thrust until be bottomed out, gasping. “Oh, fuck, yeah. You feel… god, so fucking good, so tight.”  
  
Pete whined, all his words gone, and wrapped his legs around Patrick’s waist. Patrick resisted the urge to pull out and fuck back in hard, letting Pete adjust to the feeling. He was panting, his teeth sunk into his lower lip, a little furrow between his eyebrows, flushed and sweaty.  
  
“Feel good?” Patrick asked, his hands on Pete’s hips.  
  
Pete nodded, licking his lips. “Good, good, holy shit. God, just--fucking full, I love that, you feel so fucking big. I’m okay, you can move.”  
  
Patrick rocks his hips back, pulling almost all the way out, then slid back in, slow and devastating. He wanted Pete to feel it. Pete moaned, low and dirty.  
  
“Yeah,” he drawled, his head falling back. “Oh, fuck, yeah, that feels amazing.”  
  
Patrick laughed breathlessly, clutching at the reins of his self-control. “Good.” He leant forward, linking his fingers with Pete’s and pressing both of their hands down into the mattress and watching Pete’s eyes dilate. He started to move, a slow, deliberate push and pull that had them both gasping.  
  
Patrick fucked him slow and deep and it was so intense he could hardly breathe. Pete was making these sharp little noises every time Patrick hit him just right, slick and clenching around him and breathing hard, his legs still around Patrick’s waist and his free hand fisted in the sheets.  
  
“I thought about this,” Pete gasped, his fingers flexing against Patrick’s. “Do you know how--fuck, how hard it was to talk to you like a normal human being when all I could think about was you fucking me through the mattress?”  
  
Patrick laughed, but it came out sounding more like a sob. “That’s - that’s put your restaurant visits in a whole new - really uncomfortable light.”  
  
Pete grinned, pulling Patrick down for a kiss and whispering, “For the record, I totally would’ve let you fuck me there. Screw your hygiene rating.”  
  
Patrick laughed again, weak and shaky, and fucked into him harder and faster. Pete fucking keened, and Patrick reached down to wrap his hand around Pete’s dick. Pete’s back arched, and Patrick felt his whole body tense.  
  
“Oh, fuck,” he panted. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, that’s it, just--just like that.”  
  
Patrick had jerked him off enough times by now to know how he liked it, and he was merciless. “That’s it,” he gritted out, trying to find a rhythm between his hips and his hands that would send Pete over the edge. “C’mon, are you close?”  
  
Pete threw his head back, whining. Patrick watched his stomach muscles jump as he wound up tighter, and he sped up his hand on Pete’s cock. Pete’s eyes flew open and locked on Patrick’s face, dazed and devastating. “That’s--god, yeah, I’m nearly--”  
  
“Yeah,” Patrick said, breathless, halfway out of his mind. “Yeah, c’mon. Wanna feel it when you come.”  
  
He pushed in one last time and Pete made a noise that sounded like it was torn out of him and comes all over Patrick’s hand, his body jerking and his hips rocking.  
  
“That’s it,” Patrick murmured, mouthing at Pete’s neck. Pete whimpered, still shuddering his way through the aftershocks. “You were so good, holy shit, you feel fucking incredible.” Patrick stopped moving, letting Pete come down. He was hot to the touch and slick with sweat and Patrick wanted to run his mouth all over him.  
  
“Hey,” said Pete, after a long moment, in a voice like gravel. “You alright there?”  
  
He grabbed Patrick’s hair, pulling his head up to look into his face. Patrick gasped, his hips jerking forward involuntarily.  
  
“Fuck!”  
  
Pete grinned at him, feral and lazy. “Need a hand there?”  
  
“You asshole,” said Patrick, although he knew the way his voice caught gave him away. Pete’s smile softened.  
  
“C’mon,” he murmured. “I’m okay, you can--yeah.”  
  
Patrick thrust in again and Pete’s eyes fluttered shut. Patrick could feel it getting closer, pooling in the pit of his stomach as his whole body drew tight. Pete was still hot and tight around him and his hands were in Patrick’s hair and he was running his mouth about how good Patrick’s cock felt and it was - too much. It was so fucking good.  
  
Patrick was coming almost before he realized what was happening, muffling the sound he made into Pete’s neck as he shook. Pete made a small, satisfied sound and moved his hand from Patrick’s hair to his back, stroking up and down while Patrick’s breathing evened out.  
  
“Hey,” he said, softly. “Still with me?”  
  
Patrick snorted, pulling back to grin at him. “Just about. Blowing my own trumpet, I know, but that wasn’t too shabby after a thirteen hour work day.”  
  
“You can blow mine any day,” said Pete immediately, then snickered when Patrick groaned and eased out of him. Patrick rolled away, sprawling into the sheets.  
  
“Unbelievable,” he said, making a face as he pulled the condom off, tied a knot in the end and stretched out to drop it in the trash.  
  
“Thanks,” said Pete.  
  
Patrick faceplanted into the pillow, still basking in the warmth of the afterglow. He felt the mattress dip as Pete sat up, stretched, and padded into the bathroom.  
  
“Hey,” he said, returning a minute later and nudging Patrick’s shoulder. “C’mon, don’t pass out on me yet. You wanna turn over for me? I’ve got a washcloth, I’m just gonna clean you up or you’re gonna be miserable when you wake up.”  
  
Patrick sat up, yawning, and took the washcloth Pete handed him. “Thanks,” he said. Pete’s smile had turned soft at the edges and he’d put on clean shorts and an old t-shirt. “God, I’m too old for this.”  
  
Pete laughed and climbed into the bed. “You won’t see thirty-two again, that’s for sure. I hope you’ve got your name down for a good residential home.”  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Patrick paused as another huge yawn split his face, then put the washcloth on the nightstand and lay down, his eyes already falling shut. “I’ll work ‘til I can’t anymore and then they’ll put me out to pasture, like Boxer in Animal Farm.”  
  
“I’ve heard that all the best chefs get taken out back and shot,” Pete agreed gravely, sliding a warm hand over Patrick’s belly. “‘Night, Patrick.”  
  
He reached over and hit the light switch. The room went dark, and Patrick knew no more.

 

*

 

Patrick jerked awake, breathing fast, his heart hammering. Something wasn’t right, he thought, groggily, and it took him a long moment to realize that the horrible, unearthly noise he’d been hearing in his dream wasn’t in his dream at all, but coming from somewhere in Pete’s apartment. Patrick was alone in the bed and Pete’s side was cold, the sheets pushed back and the sunshine streaming in through the window. Patrick sat up, still sleep-clumsy, and rubbed his eyes. It sounded almost like someone screaming, frightened and furious. Patrick rolled out of bed, pulled yesterday’s boxers and shirt on and followed the sound to the bathroom, where he found Pete kneeling on the floor and Bowie in the tub. Bowie was howling piteously, and Pete seemed to be trying to reason with him.  
  
“Come on, dude,” Pete was saying. “It’s not my fault you found the week-old lo mein and rolled in it. Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it, buddy, just let me--”  
  
He wrenched the shower head out of Bowie’s jaws. Bowie threw back his head and made the noise that had woken Patrick up again, his tail between his legs and an expression of profound betrayal on his doggy face. Patrick leant against the doorframe and watched, grinning.  
  
“Having fun?” said Patrick.  
  
“There you are,” Pete said, glancing over his shoulder without letting go of Bowie. “I need your help, you can hold him still for me.”  
  
“Yeah,” said Patrick. “No. Hard pass.”  
  
Pete laughed. “Coward,” he said. “Okay, Bowie, time to face the music.”  
  
Patrick ducked out of the way as Pete turned on the water and Bowie’s indignant yelp became an anguished howl.  
  
“We do this every couple weeks,” Pete half-shouted over the noise, which was deafening in the tiled bathroom. “You’d think he’d have learnt not to be such a big baby by now. I have to put a sign on the door that says, _I’m bathing my dog, no one is being murdered, please don’t call the police again._ How did you sleep?”  
  
Patrick stretched, feeling the ache in his hips and his thighs and his lower back. “Like a guy who got really fucking spectacularly laid last night,” he said. “You?”  
  
“Huh,” says Pete, twisting around to flash Patrick a quicksilver grin. “What do you know? Me too.”  
  
Something dizzy and swoopy happened in the pit of Patrick’s stomach, and he could feel himself grinning back. “You want a coffee?” he said. “I think I remember how to operate that monstrosity you call a coffee machine and you look like you need one.”  
  
“Oh, god, yes please. You go, I’ll try to keep it short and sweet here, I don’t think Bowie’s enjoying spa day.”  
  
Patrick left Pete to wrestle with sixty-odd pounds of very wet and unhappy husky. As he made his way down the hallway to the kitchen, he heard Pete say, in a tone of escalating panic, “Oh fuck, don’t shake, _don’t shake_ \--”  
  
Patrick smiled to himself. He felt so light he thought he might float away. It felt like having the giddiest, most delicious secret, like having robbed a bank and gotten away with it. Things weren’t so bad, he thought, as he fired up Pete’s terrifying coffee machine. Things weren’t so bad at all. So maybe his life wasn’t perfect, so what? If he had this, he thought, as he listened to Pete grimly hauling Bowie out of the tub and switching on a hairdryer, he could keep on going forever.  
  
While he waited for the coffee to be ready, Patrick picked up his bag from where he’d left it on the floor last night and set it on the counter. He rummaged around inside it - deodorant, keys, wallet, a graveyard of balled-up takeout receipts and a couple of plastic forks - and eventually pulled out his phone, thinking that he probably ought to check his emails if his battery wasn’t dead yet. A couple of the waitresses were leaving, having decided that their class schedules were too busy for them to hold down jobs this semester, and Patrick vaguely remembered promising to help Ray look over some resumés and find someone who’d fit in with the rest of the team.  
  
Patrick unlocked his phone with a swipe of his thumb and went straight to his inbox. There were a few missed calls and texts from a handful of people from the restaurant - probably voicemails and videos from his staff, drunk and laughing and giving him shit for bailing on the bar last night. It wouldn’t have been the first time. He’d look through them in a minute. The most recent email was from Ray (subject line: _I think you need to see this_ ) - most likely about the resumés, he thought, thumbing it open. The last time they’d been hiring, Ray had forwarded him an application where, under _reason for leaving last job_ , the candidate had written, _was stabbed by another Taco Bell employee_. They’d had it pinned up on the wall in the break room for a while.  
  
Instead of a resumé, the email contained a pasted link to an article on The Tattle, a gossipy local news site that most of Chicago’s bar and restaurant workers read on the regular. Patrick glanced away from his phone to check on the coffee while he waited for the picture to load, then looked back down - and felt his heart stop. The phone slipped through his fingers and hit the tiled floor, a delicate spiderweb of splintery cracks appearing in the corner of the screen, but Patrick barely noticed.  
  
The most viewed item that morning was a grainy cell phone photograph of him and Pete up against the door of the restaurant’s walk-in, Pete’s hands in Patrick’s hair as they kissed.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Come back to me, huh?” said Pete, quietly. “This is fucked up, but it’s not the end of the world, okay? I’ll call my editor, tell her I haven’t been near your place as a critic since before this started.”
> 
> “It feels like the end of the world,” said Patrick. He got to his feet, feeling twitchy and cornered, and ran his hands through his hair. “Jesus. No one’s going to believe that, Pete, and you know it. How the fuck can you be so calm when both of our careers are wrecked? I’m sorry, I just… I can’t, right now.”

Patrick was still staring numbly at his phone when Pete strolled into the kitchen, water-splattered and smiling wide and followed by a sulking Bowie, his tail between his legs and his ears flattened to his skull.  
  
“How’s that coffee coming along?” said Pete, leaning in to press an obnoxious, smacking kiss to Patrick’s cheek. “You’re not working today, right? I’ll make breakfast, then we’re going back to bed. Hey--” a small frown creased his forehead. “Patrick? What’s up?”  
  
Wordlessly, Patrick handed Pete his phone and watched the expression freeze on his face.  
  
“Shit,” said Pete, quietly. “Oh, _shit_.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“How do you think--”  
  
“Oh, use your head,” said Patrick, more sharply than he’d really meant to. “We left the door open like a couple of fucking _idiots_ , that’s how. Christ, what were we _thinking?_ ”  
  
Pete dragged his hands down his face. “We weren’t. Who do you think would have done it?”  
  
“Could’ve been anyone. And--Jesus, it doesn’t matter who did it, it’s out there now! The internet is forever, right? Fuck.”  
  
He was having trouble breathing, like his lungs were being crushed smaller and smaller. He couldn’t even feel the panic yet, just this awful plummeting sensation in the pit of his stomach. His body was flooding with adrenaline but there was nowhere for it to go, nowhere to run, so he just felt sick and shivery like a sped-up tape.  
  
Pete was talking, but Patrick couldn’t make sense of the words. Fuck, he thought, distantly, had Pete been right? Was this a heart attack? Pete gently pushed Patrick over to the couch, one hand on Patrick’s back like an anchor.  
  
“C’mon,” Pete said. “Head between your knees. Just breathe. You think you can do that for me?”  
  
Pete kept his hand on Patrick’s back, just rubbing in slow, soothing circles, until Patrick was quiet and shaking and covered in a cold sweat.  
  
“Come back to me, huh?” said Pete, quietly. “This is fucked up, but it’s not the end of the world, okay? I’ll call my editor, tell her I haven’t been near your place as a critic since before this started.”  
  
“It feels like the end of the world,” said Patrick. He got to his feet, feeling twitchy and cornered, and ran his hands through his hair. “Jesus. No one’s going to believe that, Pete, and you know it. How the fuck can you be so calm when both of our careers are wrecked? I’m sorry, I just… I can’t, right now.”  
  
Pete swallowed, and Patrick saw the glint of panic in his eyes. Good, thought Patrick, grimly. They were on the same page. Patrick closed his eyes, wishing the noise in his head would quiet enough for him to think. He had to do something, he couldn’t just sit here in the eye of the storm and watch while it devastated the life he’d built. He had to get dressed, then he’d figure out what to do from there. He paced back into Pete’s bedroom and started gathering up his clothes, with Pete on his heels. He needed to speak to the owners of Mise En Place, that was the first step. He was almost sure they’d have heard already, but he would have preferred to call them before they could summon him like a kid to the principal’s office.  
  
“No, come on, I just meant - maybe this the perfect opportunity,” said Pete, as Patrick yanked on his jeans with shaking hands. He was talking so fast Patrick could barely parse the words and there was a pleading note in his voice. “You want out, right? You’ve had more fun with me in the last few months than you’ve had in the last five years, admit it.”  
  
Patrick looked up at him, feeling like he was splintering down the middle. Pete’s eyes were wide and his mouth was twisted sideways, his shirt and his sweats still damp from his battle with Bowie in the tub. He looked so achingly vulnerable that it hurt to look directly at him, like staring into the sun. I’m about to break your heart, thought Patrick. I’m so sorry. “You can’t say stuff like that,” Patrick said, softly. “I can’t just give up fifteen years of my life because I… I hooked up with someone.”  
  
Pete’s jaw clenched. “Is that what I am? A hook-up?”  
  
“You’re not,” said Patrick, fiercely. “You know you weren’t, Pete, come on. I just--this is my whole life and you… you make me do dumb shit and make stupid mistakes because I can’t think straight when I’m around you. Look at this mess! I never would’ve done that before I knew you. And if I… if I fuck this up I’m going to lose everything.” He pulled his socks on, one of them still inside out, then ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. Somewhere underneath the blind panic, he could smell the anger beginning to smoulder, bitter and smokey. It was so grossly unfair that it made him want to break things.  
  
“But - would that be so bad?” said Pete, and Patrick snapped out of his thoughts.  
  
“What the fuck do you mean, _would that be so bad?_ I’ve gotta tell you, it looks pretty fucking bad from where I’m standing.” Patrick bit down on the urge to scream. It wasn’t just panic, it was frustration with a snobby, macho industry that only cared about his ability to sell seats at tables, it was every shitty review that had ever made out like he hadn’t proved himself a hundred times over, it was his fear of committing to anything meaningful because he’d always known that he’d have to choose between his job and his life one day. He’d known better from the very start, and he’d gone right ahead and done it anyway, and now he had no one to blame but himself for the fact that he was hurting. He stamped down on the rogue impulse to run his hand down his chest, stop the bleeding from a wound that wasn’t there. Instead, he marched back out into the living room. Shoes, he needed his shoes, and his bag and his jacket and his phone, and then he could get out of here before he did anything stupid, like change his mind. Then he could call the restaurant and see what could be salvaged from the wreckage.  
  
“No, I just mean - look, _listen_ , stop walking away from me,” said Pete, desperately, following him down the hallway. “You keep saying you’re too old for this, you’re too old for that. You’re thirty-three, Patrick! No one’s too old for anything at thirty fucking three! You could be doing anything, you could rule the fucking world, you’ve just gotten so used to running yourself into the ground for something you don’t love anymore and it’s killing you.”  
  
Patrick saw red. That wasn’t true. He’d sunk too much blood, sweat and tears into his career over the last fifteen years for it to be true. “Fuck you, you don’t know anything about me,” he snapped, knowing even as he said it that it wasn’t true, hating himself but knowing it would hit a nerve. “And you don’t get to pretend you do just because we’ve fucked a couple of times, you’re--I’m not like you. I can’t just quit the minute things get hard and get another job.”  
  
Some horrible part of him has hoped that if he was mean enough, if he hurt Pete enough, Pete would let him leave. He saw Pete flinch, but obviously he’d need to hit Pete harder than that if he wanted him to stay down.  
  
“You can, though,” Pete said. He grabbed Patrick’s hand, but Patrick shook him off, frantically papering over the cracks in his resolve. “Life’s short, who the fuck are you trying to impress? You don’t get gold stars for every year your stick at something that’s not making you happy!”  
  
Patrick knew Pete was right, and that pissed him off even more. He knew he should have stopped, taken a few deep breaths and given himself a minute to cool off before he could say something he’d really regret later, but he wasn’t driving anymore - something he couldn’t control had taken the wheel. “That’s easy for you to say, you were going to quit anyway,” he retorted, the words spilling out faster than he could think. He knew he wasn’t being fair, but he couldn’t stop. “If no one wants your novel you’ll just go freelance and make a quick buck by throwing together twenty of your worst reviews and calling it a--a fucking retrospective or whatever and then in two years’ time this is just going to be some cute little anecdote you can trot out at industry parties. I wouldn’t _expect_ you to understand.”  
  
For a wild, horrible split-second, he pictured himself as a cartoon character pushing down the T-shaped detonator and watching the crate of TNT go up with a bang. Finally, he’d done it, he thought, as he watched Pete’s eyes flash bright with hurt.  
  
“Yeah, maybe I don’t,” said Pete, flatly, jamming his hands into the pockets of his sweats. “But forgive me for wanting a life outside of work. You need me to draw you a fucking picture of what that looks like? Because I looked pretty hard, and you don’t fucking have one. And if this is how you’re gonna be then you never will.”  
  
There was a long, awful silence. Patrick’s palms were sweating and his heartbeat was deafening in his ears.  
  
“You know what?” he said, in a voice that didn’t sound much like his own. “This was--this was all a terrible mistake. I’ll let myself out.”  
  
Pete reached for Patrick’s hand again, and Patrick pushed him away. All the fire had gone out of Pete and looking at him made Patrick ache, somewhere deep in his chest. “C’mon,” Pete said, quietly. “I’m sorry, don’t walk out like this. Can we just… talk?”  
  
Patrick looked at Pete and felt something in him break open. “No,” he said, softly, this throat tight. “I’m… I don’t think we can. Bye, Pete.”

 

*

 

The following week was, hands down, the worst of Patrick’s life. He spent almost four whole days doing frantic damage control, mostly in the form of uncomfortable local press interviews and two excruciating meetings with the owners of Mise En Place. Suddenly, chefs and critics and everyone else who had a hand in Chicago’s restaurant scene was talking about him - not about his food or how he ran his kitchen, but about _him_ , and he hated it. There were tweets and columns and op-eds and thinkpieces, thoughtful discussions of the intricate mechanics of the industry and wildly misinformed dissections of his personal life by people who didn’t know the first thing about him. Patrick stayed up until five one night and read all of it in one feverish, masochistic binge, then promised himself he wouldn’t do it again. It wasn’t all bad - there were more than a few pieces by chefs he’d worked with and other critics who liked his food that painted him as an innocent victim of the scandal-hungry press - but it hadn’t helped. He didn’t like feeling scrutinized, like the career he’d worked so hard to build was being held up to the light so that people who’d never met him could pull it apart.  
  
He wasn’t working, which meant that he also wasn’t sleeping. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d come to rely on the never-ending exhaustion to quiet the constant, anxious whirring of his brain. By the grace of god and by the skin of his teeth, he’d managed to hold onto his job, but the owners felt that a short leave of absence would help the situation blow over faster. Joe, Brendon, Frank, Ray and a few other people from the restaurant had tried to get in touch with him, but Patrick had left their texts unanswered and their calls unreturned. He didn’t know what he was more afraid of, their disappointment or their pity.  
  
And then there was Pete. Or, rather, there wasn’t. Patrick missed him with a fierce misery that knocked the breath out of him like a sucker punch. People were writing about Pete, too, of course, but Patrick couldn’t bear to read any of it. Pete had fitted himself into Patrick’s life and into his heart like he’d been meant to be there all along, and now he was gone and Patrick was acutely aware of the space he’d left behind, a space Patrick hadn’t even realised was there. Patrick had wanted a clean break, but this was a rough, ugly tear with jagged edges that hurt every time he moved. He was so busy trying to put out the fire and salvage his reputation that he didn’t have much time to dwell on it, but it knifed through him when he checked his phone, unthinking, half-expecting a message, and when he lay awake at night wishing it would all close over him like a wave and disappear him forever.  
  


*

 

Ten days after the news broke, Patrick stood in front of his staff. He hadn’t previously thought that the kind of humiliation he was experiencing existed outside of the kind of dreams where you found yourself at school without pants on, never mind that you were in your mid thirties and hadn’t set foot in a school in almost twenty years. He’d had a call from the owners the day before, who had changed their minds and now felt that keeping him away from the restaurant was just stirring up more interest. They wanted him back at work right away, and Patrick was pathetically grateful for the distraction. He’d been climbing the walls of his apartment, replaying all the mistakes he’d made on an awful, never-ending loop.  
  
There was nothing Patrick would have liked more than to go back and carry on like nothing had happened, but he felt like he owed everyone an explanation, so he’d called a last minute staff meeting. He’d been planning to do it in the break room, but so many people had shown up that they’d had to move downstairs to the kitchen. In fact, Patrick thought, looking around at the expectant faces, almost everyone was there. Frank was having some sort of kid-related crisis and a few of the waiters and waitresses weren’t there because they were mostly college kids with classes and other jobs, but there couldn’t have been more than five or six people missing.  
  
“So,” said Patrick. He swallowed, and forced himself to keep going. The faster he could push through this, the faster it would be over. “I’m, uh. I’m sure you all know why I haven’t been around this week.”  
  
The kitchen was both more crowded and more silent than he’d ever known it. He pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath, trying not to meet anyone’s eyes.  
  
“I’m sorry, everyone. I’m not gonna try to tell you those pictures weren’t what they looked like, because they were. I swear to god he hasn’t been in here as a critic since this started, it was never… about that. But it was stupid and unprofessional and I should’ve let you all know. But, uh. It’s over now. So. Nothing to worry about.”  
  
“Aw,” said a quiet, disappointed voice. Patrick didn’t see who it was, but his money would have been on Brendon. Patrick managed a shaky smile.  
  
“Anyway, I wanted to thank you all for sticking with me, but if any of you want out, you’ll get good references from me. Does anyone have any questions?”  
  
“I do.” Joe’s arms were folded. “You know who leaked the pictures?”  
  
Patrick sighed. “I don’t,” he said, wearily. “I know the odds are that it was someone who works here, but I don’t… I’d rather not think that, it doesn’t feel great. But, you know, I was doing something I shouldn’t have been doing and I got caught. I don’t know if I’m allowed to be mad about it.”  
  
Joe looked sceptical, but kept his mouth shut. God, Patrick was so sick of it all. He was sick of talking about it and thinking about it and having to explain himself. He’d spent the last week and  a half licking his wounds and now he just wanted to be left alone to work. All he needed was the chance to prove that he’d worked to get where he was, that it hadn’t been handed to him because he’d fucked the right people.  
  
“Anyway,” said Patrick, “Even if I thought I knew - and I don’t, okay - I still wouldn’t say anything unless I could prove it because I’m having a shitty week as it is and I don’t want to get my ass sued off. Any other questions?”  
  
Brendon’s hand went up.  
  
Patrick took a long look at the expression on Brendon’s face and said, “Any questions that aren’t about what Pete Wentz is like in bed?”  
  
Brendon’s hand went back down.  
  
“Okay,” said Patrick, and let out a long, slow breath. “Let’s go. If you’re not working today, thanks for coming, you can all go home now. If you are, we’re starting lunch prep.”

 

*

  
The next morning, Patrick was woken by his phone buzzing furiously on the nightstand next to him. He groaned and screwed his eyes shut, hoping that it would stop and that let him go back to sleep. It was half past nine, which was still the middle of the night, as far as he was concerned. Eventually, though, Patrick accepted defeat. He groped for his phone and unplugged it from the charger, holding it close to his face and squinting. There were several missed calls, a few voicemails and a stack of messages from Ray, from Spencer, from Gabe. Patrick sat bolt upright, icy-hot panic trickling into his stomach, remembering the last time so many people from the restaurant had tried to get hold of him at once. What now? Hadn’t he suffered enough this week already? The most recent message was from Joe, and, with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, Patrick opened it. It read,  _ restaurant. NOW.  _ Patrick swore and rolled out of bed, stumbling into yesterday’s clothes.  _ Leaving now, just walking to the L _ , he wrote back, one-handed, as he brushed his teeth. The reply was quick, just a few moments later:  _ Get a cab. You gotta see this. _


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patrick sat in the back of the taxi on the way to the restaurant, wondering what the hell had happened. He’d read the other messages and listened to the voicemails, but none of them had contained anything in the way of useful information. Why was everyone he knew so goddamn dramatic? Would it have killed them to just tell him what was going on? Had the place burned down? Was he being fired after all? It was hard to imagine how things could possibly get any worse than they’d been this past week and a half, but Patrick didn’t like to say that kind of thing out loud or even think it too loudly just in case the universe was listening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back! This one's a little late in the day, because 50% of the creative team got a dog this week and the other 50% has a fuckload of work on at the moment. Thank you all for bearing with us after last week's cliffhanger - all will be revealed...

Patrick sat in the back of the taxi on the way to the restaurant, wondering what the hell had happened. He’d read the other messages and listened to the voicemails, but none of them had contained anything in the way of useful information. Why was everyone he knew so goddamn dramatic? Would it have killed them to just tell him what was going on? Had the place burned down? Was he being fired after all? It was hard to imagine how things could possibly get any worse than they’d been this past week and a half, but Patrick didn’t like to say that kind of thing out loud or even think it too loudly just in case the universe was listening. Good news, he thought, instead. I’m ready for some good news. The prospect of changing his name and moving across the country was looking more and more inviting by the day.  
  
It was a much shorter ride than it would have been if he’d taken the L, and before long the cab was pulling up outside the restaurant. Patrick paid the driver and jumped out almost before the car had come to a complete stop, half-running over to the group of people standing on the sidewalk with his sneakers slapping on the ground and his bag bumping against his hip. Patrick elbowed his way through the crush, not sure whether to be worried or reassured that no one seemed to be paying any attention to him. Most of his staff were arranged in a loose circle around Ryan and Brendon, and Patrick shoved his way over to Joe and nudged him in the ribs.  
  
“Hey,” he said. “What did I miss, what the hell’s going on?”  
  
“It’s crazy, man, they’ve been out here yelling at each other for nearly half an hour,” said Joe, not taking his eyes off the unfolding drama. “But, uh. I think we’ve solved the mystery of who took that photo.”  
  
“ _Half an hour?_ ” spluttered Patrick. “And you didn’t try to break this up or move it inside? Jesus, this place is a circus, I’m going to fire you all and hire a whole new staff of the most boring people I can find. Also--hold on, we’ve _what?_ ”  
  
Joe tilted his head in Ryan and Brendon’s direction. They were only a few feet apart but Brendon was shouting like they were at opposite ends of a baseball field, his face tear-streaked and Ryan’s flushed a dull, ugly red.  
  
“I knew it,” Brendon was yelling. “I knew it, I fucking knew it! You were with us at the bar that night but you went back to get your coat and you weren’t here yesterday because you didn’t have the guts to face Patrick after what you did. _Why_ , Ryan?”  
  
“I thought you were sleeping with him,” said Ryan, his low, quiet voice carrying horribly well in the stunned silence.  
  
Brendon stared at him for a long moment, open-mouthed. “With _Patrick?_ That’s. Ryan, that’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. Is that why you leaked the fucking photo? For--for _payback_ because you think I fucked him to get this job? You absolute fucking asshole.”  
  
Ryan laughed, flat and bitter. “Seriously? You’re gonna stand here and tell me I’m crazy for thinking it when everyone knows he’s been putting out for good reviews?”  
  
Brendon glanced back over his shoulder at Patrick. “Nobody thinks that,” he said, as much to Patrick as to Ryan.  
  
“Everybody thinks that,” spat Ryan, more animated than Patrick had ever seen him. Brendon opened his mouth to snap back, and Patrick sighed, rubbing his temples.  
  
“It’s okay, Brendon,” he said. “I’m not stupid, I know what people are saying. Look, I’m sure you’ve both got more to say, but can we please take this inside?” He could already see the headline on The Tattle - _Dinner And A Show: Embattled Mise En Place In Crisis!_ Brendon was still watching Ryan. For a moment Patrick really thought Brendon might start throwing punches, but he turned away and yanked the door open instead. Patrick exchanged a disbelieving look with Joe, and they followed him into the empty restaurant.  
  
Patrick had hoped that getting inside might calm Brendon down, but he wasn’t finished. Before the door had even swung closed behind them, Brendon rounded on Ryan again.  
  
“You know what fucking gets me, Ryan?” he hissed. “I wouldn’t have given a shit if people knew we were together. But you didn’t want to come out, and I respected that.”  
  
Joe leant over towards Patrick. “I don’t think this is about you anymore, buddy,” he murmured.  
  
Patrick pinched the bridge of his nose. He could feel the tension headache gathering like storm clouds behind his eyes. “I don’t think it ever was. I think I was just… collateral damage.”  
  
Someone clapped Patrick on the shoulder, and he turned around to see Frank. “Hey, Patrick. You think we should try to break this up?”  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” said Patrick, wearily. “We might as well let them finish it now or they’re gonna start again in the middle of service. At least we’re not open yet.”  
  
“I needed more time, alright? I was getting there,” Ryan snapped, and Brendon snorted.  
  
“Yeah, six months of hooking up and you’d almost worked your way up to fucking me when you were sober. But - fine, whatever, I’m sure you had your reasons, right? What I don’t get is how the hell you could out Patrick like that and stand here like you think you were right! I would _never_ have done that to you, Ryan. Never, no matter how bad you’d pissed me off.”  
  
This seemed like a very private fight to be having with so many people watching, but neither Brendon nor Ryan looked like they’d even noticed their audience. Patrick felt like he should have been comforted by the reminder that he wasn’t the only one whose love life was a trainwreck, but he wasn’t. Instead, he just felt exhausted and hollowed-out - there was no joy in seeing someone else miserable. He didn’t even have the energy to be angry with Ryan, although he was distantly aware that he should have been furious.  
  
“You don’t… it’s not about that,” said Ryan. He was very carefully not meeting Patrick’s eyes. “He was a _critic_ , Brendon, it’s about in--”  
  
“Integrity?” Brendon’s voice rose, incredulously. “ _Integrity_ , Ryan? Is that what you were gonna say? It was about spite. How fucking stupid do you think I am?”  
  
Ryan reached out for Brendon’s hand but he recoiled, snatching it back like Ryan was a dangerous animal, and the hurt on Ryan’s face was plain to see. Patrick sighed. What a sad, sorry mess. It was time to shut this down.  
  
“Alright,” said Patrick, wearily. “Come on, everybody, show’s over. We’re opening for lunch in an hour and a half and I know you haven’t all finished your prep work.”  
  
Ryan turned to look at Patrick, and for a split second he looked so young and so uncertain that Patrick almost felt sorry for him. “Aren’t you going to say anything?” he demanded, and Patrick’s sympathy shrank sharply.  
  
“I think you’ve said enough for both of us, don’t you?” he said, coolly. His patience had run dry a long time ago and his nerves were fraying. “What do you want me to say, Ryan? You want me to throw my hands up and say you got me, Pete Wentz was the perfect smokescreen, you’re the only one who figured out that it was me and Brendon this whole time? I’m sorry to disappoint you. Stay, go, I don’t care what you do. All I want is for this place to start running like a restaurant again and not a goddamn reality TV show.”  
  
Ryan opened his mouth, and then closed it again. “Fine,” he said, after a beat, his voice flat and final. The crowd parted to let him through, and everybody watched as he wrenched the door open and walked out.  
  
For a long moment, no one spoke.  
  
“Shit,” said Frank, into the shell-shocked silence. “I should cancel my cable.”  
  
Whatever spell had been cast by Ryan’s leaving broke. Several people laughed, and the room relaxed.  
  
“Okay,” said Joe, giving Patrick’s shoulder a friendly squeeze. “You heard the man, you slackers. Lunch prep starts now.”

 

*

 

Once he was satisfied that everything was underway and that the well-oiled machine of the restaurant was running right, Patrick went looking for Brendon. He was conspicuously absent from the dining room, and he wasn’t making trouble in the kitchen or hiding in the walk-in. Patrick, who was beginning to worry, headed upstairs. Mise En Place wasn’t a big place; there were only so many places Brendon could be.  
  
He found Brendon in the break room with his head and shoulders jammed through the one tiny window so he could smoke. When he heard the door open behind him, he tried to wriggle back through the window and put out his cigarette at the same time, his mouth already opening to shape an excuse, then he saw that it was Patrick and relaxed. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”  
  
“No offence taken,” said Patrick, mildly, and Brendon cracked a small smile. “You disappeared on us, I wanted to make sure you were alright. Go home, man. We’ll be alright without you today.”  
  
Brendon shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said, fiercely, like he thought he could make himself believe it if he only pretended hard enough.  
  
“You don’t look it, buddy,” Patrick said. Brendon’s eyes were still red and he looked ready to fall apart like an airport paperback. I don’t want you crying all over the customers.”  
  
Brendon managed a watery laugh and scrubbed at his eyes. “I’m okay,” he said. “I don’t really feel like going home, that’s all. Anyway, you so do need me here, you big fat liar, I’ve seen the books for tonight. We’re slammed, thanks to you, Mr. Infamous. I don’t know why. Like, are people hoping they’re going to see you and Wentz fucking on one of the tables?”  
  
That startled a laugh out of Patrick, all the air leaving him like he’d been punched in the gut. It felt good and it hurt like hell all at once. He missed Pete like a phantom limb, more than he would have thought was possible a year ago, but he’d been circling around this thing for so long in his own head that it was good to hear someone put it into perspective for what it was: dumb gossip, a minor scandal involving two D-list local celebrities. “Well,” Patrick said, drily. “After this morning, who could blame them for wanting to see act two?”

 

*

 

“Boy,” said Brendon, loudly and pointedly, as he slammed his locker shut. “It sure would be terrible if someone took me out and got me absolutely wasted tonight, you know what I’m saying?”  
  
It was the end of the night, and people were zipping up jackets and putting on gloves and scarves as they got ready to go home. After that morning, lunch and then dinner service had gone off without a hitch. It was all Patrick had wanted: to be left alone to do his job.  
  
“I’m in,” he said, suddenly, without knowing quite what made him do it. He’d been thinking about what Brendon had said earlier, and he didn’t feel much like going home either.  
  
Brendon glanced over his shoulder and made an interested noise. He’d pulled it together and managed to get through the day, but Patrick wasn’t fooled by the easy-breezy mask. “Well, well, well,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Look who breaks up with his boyfriend and comes crawling back. Not too good to go drinking with us now, are you?”  
  
“You’re fired,” said Patrick, amiably. “Alright, who else is coming?”  
  
“Not me,” said Joe, around a yawn. “I can’t take any more excitement today.”  
  
“I’ll come for one or two.” Frank threw his bag over my shoulder. “Who knows what’s going to go down? I don’t wanna miss anything.”  
  
Spencer caved to Brendon’s puppy dog eyes, as did Greta, and Brendon began to look happier. “Okay,” he said, clapping his hands. “Let’s go, guys, we’re wasting valuable time when you could all be buying me drinks.”

 

*

 

Three hours later, the few hangers-on who’d come with them to the bar had gone home and only Brendon and Patrick were left. Brendon hadn’t bought a drink all night, and he’d been listing gently sideways for the last half hour. He downed the last of his beer and rolled the bottle between his hands, his face crumpled in an unhappy frown. Through the boozy haze, it occurred to Patrick that at some point, while his back had been turned, Brendon had crossed the divide between work-friend and friend-friend. Patrick couldn’t remember the last time he’d made a friend-friend, or the last time he’d made the time to see a friend outside of work just for the pleasure of seeing them. _Forgive me for wanting a life outside of work_ , said Pete’s voice in Patrick’s head. _You need me to draw you a fucking picture of what that looks like? Because I looked pretty hard, and you don’t fucking have one. And if this is how you’re gonna be then you never will._ It cut deep, just like it had every other time he’d replayed that memory, and he sighed and reached for his own drink again.  
  
“I’m sorry, Patrick,” said Brendon, miserably. “I honestly never thought he’d pull something like this. If I even… if I even knew he thought I’d fucked my way into this job I would’ve set him straight. I didn’t think he cared enough to be jealous.”  
  
“Hey, hey,” said Patrick, rubbing Brendon’s shoulder soothingly. “None of us did, buddy, don’t blame yourself. What the hell happened between you two? That looked pretty intense back there.”  
  
Brendon let out a weak cough of a laugh. “Buckle up,” he said.  “We, uh, started hooking up in our first year of college. He was… experimenting, but I guess he liked it enough to keep coming back. After a few months, I thought he might want to, you know. Make it official.”  
  
Patrick sucked air through his teeth. “And he didn’t.”  
  
“I guess not,” said Brendon, dully. “I don’t know, I thought if I stuck around and I was patient he’d get used to being… gay, bi, whatever. I would’ve waited. I _did_ wait.” He sighed. “I just wanted him to meet my parents.”  
  
This, at least, Patrick understood. He knew that Brendon’s family was religious and that they’d been less than delighted when he moved across the country, even less delighted when he dropped out of college and absolutely horrified when he came out. They were back on speaking terms, from what Patrick had gathered - Brendon didn’t talk about it much - but that hadn’t always been the case. Patrick could understand Brendon wanting them to see that he was happy, that he had someone, even if he was living in sin with another man.  
  
“Anyway,” said Brendon, in an unconvincingly light, careless voice. “I brought it up again and he freaked out, didn’t speak to me for a month. But I’m a sucker, so I took him back when he got lonely and came back around, and we just… kept on doing that, over and over again. We’d get close, he’d freak out, he’d miss me, he’d come back. I started thinking, you know, maybe after all these years and all the hours I’d spent wondering if I was wasting my time, it was finally going to pay off.”  
  
“And then?” prompted Patrick, although he thought he could see where things were going.  
  
“And then I got the head waiter job,” said Brendon. “And he didn’t. I just remember him yelling at me about this, this… stupid fucking thing that didn’t fucking matter at all - I make, like, an extra three bucks an hour, for fuck’s sake - and I remember thinking, give it up. He’s never going to be in love with you like you’re in love with him.” His voice was flat and matter-of-fact. Patrick sighed and wrapped an arm around him, and Brendon slumped against his side.  
  
“I’m sorry, B,” said Patrick, sadly. “Shit, maybe if I’d known I could’ve…”  
  
“Nah,” said Brendon, gloomily. “It’s kind of fitting, I guess. It was a shitty fucking end to a shitty fucking excuse for a relationship. I don’t think there’s anything you could’ve done that would’ve made it better.”  
  
“Jesus,” said Patrick. “I had no idea any of this was going down. I don’t know, maybe I should talk to you guys more.” He’d never seen Brendon so down, and it made him sad to think that Brendon hadn’t felt like he could talk about it.  
  
Brendon managed a weak laugh. “Dude, relax. You can’t be on top of everything, especially not my shitshow love life.” He leered half-heartedly at Patrick. “You’re always welcome on top of me, though.”  
  
Patrick chuckled, laying his head on Brendon’s shoulder. “I’d crush you. You’d die.”  
  
“I’d die happy, though.” Brendon plastered himself against Patrick’s side and said, in a slurred but sincere voice, “You gotta get him back, Patrick.”  
  
Patrick sighed and petted Brendon’s hair. He was a good kid. “I don’t think I can,” he said, sadly. “I said, uh. I said some pretty fucked-up shit, I don’t think he’s going to want me back after that.”  
  
Brendon tucked his head into Patrick’s neck and laughed damply. “Seriously. There can’t be more than one sad gay boy in a kitchen, Patrick, It’s the rules. Go get him back. Live your rainbow dream.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The week before, Brendon had asked him about his plans for new year’s eve, and Patrick, like the trusting fool that he was, had said that he didn’t have any - which was how, after Mise En Place had closed its doors for the final time that year, he’d found himself in a noisy, dimly-lit gay bar with Brendon and a whole crowd of his friends as the time ticked down towards midnight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, we're a day late with this one. Sorry, lads! This is the penultimate chapter - how is it all going to end?

**two months later - new year’s eve**

Patrick leant across the bar, cringing at the way his hands and his sleeves stuck to it. “Hi,” he said, half-shouting to make himself heard over the pounding music. He could feel it in his chest, like he was being hit repeatedly with a meat tenderizer. “I’ll have, uh…” he scanned the menu one last time in the desperate hope that something new would have appeared that wasn’t a lurid cocktail so sweet that just thinking about it made his back teeth ache, or dairy-based and named after a sex act. Unfortunately, the menu he’d been looking at for the last half hour hadn’t changed. “A whiskey sour, please.”  
  
The bartender flashed him a bright white smile, his teeth glinting under the neon lights. “Anything else? I can recommend the blowjob.”  
  
I’m sure you can, thought Patrick, uncharitably. The bartender was cute, but all Patrick wanted was to drink enough to get him through to twelve, take a cab home and pass out in his clothes. December at Mise En Place had been flat out, like it always was, and he was exhausted. The week before, Brendon had asked him about his plans for new year’s eve, and Patrick, like the trusting fool that he was, had said that he didn’t have any - which was how, after Mise En Place had closed its doors for the final time that year, he’d found himself in a noisy, dimly-lit gay bar with Brendon and a whole crowd of his friends as the time ticked down towards midnight. So far, Patrick had been sweetly but clumsily hit on by three different guys, not one of whom looked old enough to drink. God, he missed Pete. “Just the whiskey sour,” said Patrick, firmly.  
  
While he waited, he wondered whether there was a single, identifiable point - a year, a day, a moment - when he’d officially become too old for places like this. He liked Madonna as much as the next guy, but he liked his hearing more.  
  
Just then, Brendon came barreling into Patrick, shining with sweat under the lights and putting out heat like a furnace. He seemed to have acquired a light dusting of glitter since Patrick had last seen him. He threw one arm around Patrick, transferring a good amount of the glitter onto Patrick’s shirt in the process. “Two!” he shouted to the bartender. “Two of whatever he’s having. On me.”  
  
“You got it.” The bartender took the handful of sweaty, crumpled bills Brendon pushed across the bar. “And for you?”  
  
“Surprise me,” said Brendon, with a wink that should have been unbearably corny but somehow just played as endearing. He turned his attention back to Patrick and gave him a squeeze and a sloppy smile. “Hey, buddy!” he yelled. “You having a good time?”  
  
“The best,” Patrick lied, accepting the glass that the bartender handed him and taking a sip. It wasn’t good, but it was strong. “You?”  
  
“We’re not talking about me,” said Brendon, jabbing a mock-accusatory finger into Patrick’s chest. “We’re talking about _you_ , Patrick Stump. What the hell, man? I’ve watched you turn, like three different people down tonight. You could clean up in here if you wanted to.”  
  
Patrick made a face. “I know,” he shouted back, “I just feel like I’m chaperoning at prom. You know my rule, I won’t go home with anyone who looks like they’re going to call me daddy.”  
  
Brendon shrugged. “Fine. But you know the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.”  
  
Brendon, Patrick couldn’t help but notice, seemed to be taking his own advice - he was already rocking some serious stubble burn. Perhaps that was where the glitter had come from. “All I want to get under tonight is a table,” said Patrick, and Brendon rolled his eyes.  
  
“Killjoy,” he said. “You’re going to have some fun tonight if it kills me. C’mon, why are you lurking over here? Come and dance with us.”  
  
Brendon’s friends were a cohort of extremely well-groomed theatre kids and drama school dropouts, two of whom had already made it very clear that they’d like to get to know Patrick better. Patrick was still several cocktails short of drunk enough to dance.  
  
Once they had their drinks, Brendon towed Patrick across the floor and into a booth. A couple of Brendon’s friends were doing Jägerbombs while the others danced, and Patrick slid into the vinyl seat. He could feel it sticking to his jeans, and he was pretty sure he was sweating through his shirt.  
  
“Paaaatrick.” Brendon sat down next to him and draped himself over Patrick, pressing their cheeks together. “I’m too pretty to have no one to kiss at midnight.”  
  
Patrick laughed and ruffled Brendon’s hair. “Keep it moving, sunshine, this isn’t the kisser you’re looking for.”  
  
“You’re no fun,” said Brendon, without heat. “So, come on. New year’s resolutions, go.”  
  
“I never keep them,” said Patrick, through a yawn. He took a sip of his drink and wondered, idly, whether he could get away with checking his watch. How much longer until midnight? Surely not too much longer, right? “I don’t really make them anymore.”  
  
Brendon blew a disparaging raspberry against Patrick’s cheek. “What the hell, man,” he said. “You should give it another shot. It’s gonna be our year. I’ve got a good feeling about this one.”  
  
“If you say so,” Patrick agreed, pulling Brendon upright as he began to list to the side.  
  
“Fuck yeah it is,” Brendon shouted over the ABBA song that was blaring over the speakers. “You’re going to get a hotass boyfriend to go with your dream job and your ridiculously sweet apartment. I can feel it. Like, in my waters.”  
  
Patrick suddenly felt very, very tired. “Dream job,” he mumbled. “Sweet apartment, yeah, that’s. Yeah. And, you know. You too.”  
  
“Noooooo. No boyfriends, not this year. I’m gonna live in sin, baby. Play the field a little.”  
  
“Uh huh,” said Patrick. Brendon was a romantic; field-playing wasn’t his style. Although, Patrick thought, after Ryan, who could blame him?  
  
Brendon downed the last of the drink the bartender had made him - it looked like a Long Island iced tea, Patrick thought, with a shudder - and said, “I’m gonna dance, okay? And when I get back you’re gonna tell me about all the cool shit you’re gonna do this year.” He slid out of the booth and vanished into the writhing crush of bodies on the dancefloor, and Patrick sighed. He was going to need at least one more drink to insulate himself from Brendon’s earnest, wide-eyed optimism. He got to his feet and began to push his way through the crowd to the bar.  
  
What _was_ he going to do that year? The honest answer, Patrick thought, as he waited for a bartender to be free, was nothing. He could see it stretching out ahead of him like railroad tracks, straight and narrow, burning away through the days and the months. He wasn’t going to get promoted, or take up a hobby, or get a dog, or start going to the gym, even though he’d theoretically been a member for the last three years. He couldn’t even see himself meeting someone and giving the dating thing another go. _And if this is how you’re gonna be_ , he thought, remembering the way Pete’s mouth had shaped the words, _then you never will_. Now that he’d been made to see it, he couldn’t un-see it. It was like learning a new word and then hearing it everywhere, like one of those magic eye posters - now that he’d seen the picture, he couldn’t go back to seeing just the pattern.  
  
Seized by a sudden, stupid impulse, he leaned across the bar and caught the eye of the bartender who’d flirted with him earlier. He was taller than Patrick, wiry, fair-haired and blue-eyed, with an interesting, angular face, and he gave Patrick a long, slow look up and down as he sauntered over. “Hey,” said Patrick. “Say I’d changed my mind. About the blowjob.”  
  
The bartender raised an eyebrow, grinning. He had a nice smile, kind of crooked. “The shooter, or…?”  
  
“Surprise me,” said Patrick.

 

*

**january**

Patrick had learned a long time ago that the only sure-fire way to take time off between the early December and the early January when you worked in a restaurant was to get yourself hospitalized. Instead, he usually visited his parents early in the new year and let his mom boss him around in the kitchen while she cooked, for old time’s sake. He’d hoped that being out of the city for a few days - being _home_ \- would clear his head, but it hadn’t. He felt just as lost at sea as he had before.  
  
“What would you say if I quit my job?” said Patrick, turning the vegetable peeler over in his hand. He was helping his mom make mashed potatoes, and he was enjoying the worn-in familiarity of the ritual. There was snow on the ground outside, dusting the roofs and the sidewalks and the backyards where he’d grown up. If his younger self could have seen him, he would have looked like he was living the dream. So why did he feel as though his own life was a math problem and he’d gotten the answer wrong?  
  
“Start telling people that Megan’s the successful one, I suppose,” said his mom. “Come on, peel faster, you’re the fancy chef. Why, hon? You thinking about jumping ship?”  
  
“No, no,” he said. “Just… thinking out loud.”

 

*

**march**

Patrick was so groggy when he stumbled into Mise En Place that it took him a long time to notice the frisson in the air. As he made his way up the stairs to the break room, everybody else seemed to be coming down, already changed and ready to start prepping for lunch service. Were people looking at him more than usual, or was he imagining things? He stepped into the break room, passing Brendon on his way, and swung his bag down from his shoulder.  
  
“Hey, B, how’re you?”  
  
“ _I’m_ fine,” said Brendon, in a significant tone of voice. Patrick was sure Brendon had been about to go downstairs with the others, but now he was loitering by the door, almost vibrating in place with palpable excitement. “How are _you?_ ”  
  
“Alright,” Patrick said, wearily. “Come on, I know you’re dying to tell me. What’s up?”  
  
“You haven’t heard?” said Brendon, immediately. The way he said it, with a slight, disbelieving stress on the _you_ , should have tipped Patrick off, but he’d overslept and barely made it in on time and he wasn’t firing on all cylinders yet.  
  
“Obviously not,” Patrick said, dragging his hands down his face. God, he didn’t know how he was going to make it through the next thirteen hours. “What is it this time?”  
  
“Pete Wentz quit the Tribune.” Brendon’s voice was tremulous, fizzing with the excitement of good gossip.  
  
Patrick felt the lurch in his stomach that he’d come to associate with Pete’s name. So Pete had finally done it, had he? “No shit,” he said, when he realized Brendon was still watching him, waiting for a reaction.  
  
“You know what this means? He’s not a critic anymore! You two can finally bang it out in the kitchen guilt-free.”  
  
Patrick sighed and opened his locker. “We broke up, Brendon. The, the… guilt-free banging-out ship has sailed. He’s not gonna want to hear it from me, I guarantee it.”  
  
Brendon made an exaggerated sad face. After hounding Patrick for weeks about his one night stand with the bartender on new year’s eve, Brendon had gotten bored and gone right back to hounding him about Pete. Patrick didn’t know how to make him understand that it hadn’t been a little falling-out over the photographs, it had been an awful fight during which Patrick had said a whole lot of really shitty things. The best thing he could do for Pete, Patrick thought, was to stay away from him.  
  
“Anyway,” said Patrick, crisply. “He’s still a critic. He’s just a critic who’s not getting paid.” It was unfair and he knew it, but something dark and nasty had settled in his gut when he thought about Pete cutting himself free to do whatever he wanted while Patrick was stuck like a needle in the groove of a record. “I’m sure his book of greatest hits will be in every Barnes and Noble before Christmas. Just because--hey, what are you doing?” he said, as Brendon circled him, looking interested.  
  
“Looking for the stick up your ass,” said Brendon.  
  
Patrick rolled his eyes. “God, deliver me from waiters who think they’re funny.”  
  
“You just don’t appreciate me,” Brendon said, loftily. “You should check out his last column, though. You’ll want to hear what he’s got to say.”  
  
“Yeah,” said Patrick, distractedly, as he closed his locker again. He knew he wouldn’t. He wasn’t in the mood for a pep talk about following your dreams and he didn’t want to hear what Pete had to say about him, because it would be uncomfortable and upsetting and, worst of all, it would probably be true. “Yeah, I’ll… I’ll give it a look.”

 

*

 

Patrick’s day didn’t get a whole lot better from there. He was distracted and irritable, which was never a good start, and he kept walking in on conversations that stopped abruptly when the people having them realized he was nearby. Things had gone right back to the way they’d been in the days after Ryan had leaked the photographs of him and Pete to The Tattle, when the scandal was still fresh and everyone except Patrick had obsessively picked over every detail. In the months that followed, there was new drama elsewhere, and people had lost interest in Patrick’s love life and moved on. But now, Patrick was back in the spotlight, and he hated it. He’d found that it was easy enough not to think about Pete as long as he kept himself busy, kept moving - like a shark that would drown if it stopped swimming. Pete’s farewell column kicking up dust was the last thing he needed.  
  
He locked his front door behind him and let out a long, slow breath. He was home, safe from nosy but well-meaning colleagues, and he’d made it through the day. His eyes were gritty and sore and his feet felt heavy. He dropped his bag by the door and made his way across the living room, kicking off his shoes and shedding his jacket as he went, then stopped. His gaze lingered on the guitar, still propped against the wall, and the memory sank its teeth into him. It had been near the end, just a week or two before the photographs and the subsequent fight, and Pete had shown up with a big paper bag of groceries, insisting that Patrick’s underworked kitchen made his apartment feel like a movie set.  
  
“And I bought you a little something,” Pete had said, handing over a square foil package.  
  
Patrick had looked down at the guitar strings in his hand, feeling slightly choked up. “Thanks,” he’d said.  
  
Pete had grinned. “There. Now you’ve got no excuse not to play. You want me to start on dinner while you put those on? You can serenade me.”  
  
Pete had disappeared into the kitchen with the groceries while Patrick had set about taking the old strings off and replacing them with the new ones. Once he was done, he’d tuned up and called, “Any requests?”  
  
“Uh… Stairway?”  
  
“Fuck off.”  
  
“Freebird.”  
  
“Calm down, Dad Rock. Uh. Okay.” His fingers had felt clumsy on the fretboard and he’d futzed through a few chords before settling on a Ben Folds song he kind of remembered. This time, Pete hadn’t interrupted and Patrick had started to get into it, letting muscle memory take over until his foot was tapping against the hardwood and his head was nodding to the beat.  
  
Back in the present, Patrick picked up the guitar and brushed the dust away. He looked at it for a long moment, remembering the way Pete had stood leaning against the doorframe, dishcloth in hand, looking at Patrick like he wanted to eat him alive.  
  
With a sigh, Patrick put the guitar back in its case and put it away in the back of his closet.

 

*

**august**

When the day came, it wasn’t seismic or earth-shattering. Patrick woke up one bright morning filled with cool, steady certainty in what he was about to do. He opened his laptop, and began to draft his resignation.  
  
After he’d hit send, the first person he called was Joe. The owners would need to start looking for a replacement soon, and if anyone deserved a heads-up, it was Joe. Joe was such a perfect sous-chef that Patrick sometimes wondered if he’d dreamed him up. He was fast and unbelievably competent and he had great menu ideas and he never brought any ego or temper into the kitchen and he leaned into crises instead of flexing against them, a bad habit Patrick had yet to kick.  
  
“If you’re going somewhere new, I’m coming with you,” said Joe, immediately, and Patrick smiled.  
  
“I promise you I’m not, or you’d be the first person I’d try to poach. I just thought I’d let you know that, you know, they’ll be looking for a new head chef. If you want it, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble convincing the owners. They couldn’t do much better than you.”  
  
Joe laughed. “Yeah, no thanks. I mean--don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it, but… no. No offence, but I’ve seen what that job’s done to you. I’ve got a slipped disc and a toddler who doesn’t sleep, that’s enough excitement for me.”  
  
Patrick snorted and leant back against the couch cushions. “Yeah, alright, that’s fair.”  
  
“So what are you gonna do instead, if you’re not switching teams? Write a cookbook? Become a TV chef?”  
  
Patrick took a long look around him at the tidy living room, the pristine kitchen, the blank walls of the hallway. It looked just the same as it had when he’d moved in, almost five years ago. It was, unmistakably, the apartment of someone who inhabited their own life like it was a hotel room.  
  
“You know,” he said. “I haven’t figured it out yet.”

 

*

**september**

“I can’t believe you’re _leaving_ ,” said Brendon, for maybe the hundredth time. Patrick had broken the news to him weeks ago - Brendon had known before any of the other waitstaff, in fact, because Patrick had accidentally let it slip and had then had to swear him to secrecy - and Brendon still hadn’t gotten over it.  
  
“It’s not even my last day yet,” said Patrick, mildly. They were standing in the alleyway behind the restaurant while Brendon smoked. The lunch service cleanup was finished and it would be time to start dinner prep soon, but it was good to be outside and they were lingering in the slice of late afternoon sunshine that reached into the narrow alley. The seasons hadn’t turned yet, and it was a warm, mellow afternoon. A handful of other smokers had joined them and the break room window was open above them, snatches of laughter and conversation drifting out. Patrick had been waiting for the other shoe to drop, for a stab of panic or regret, but it hadn’t happened yet.  
  
“You’re _leaving_ ,” Brendon repeated, as if it was the worst betrayal he could imagine. He exhaled smoke. “How much longer, another week?”  
  
“Two. The Friday after next, that’s my last day.”  
  
Brendon nodded and took another drag. “Nice. You do that on purpose?”  
  
Patrick looked at him. “Do what?”  
  
Brendon laughed. “Come on, dude, don’t play, I thought everyone knew. Half the chefs in Chicago are talking about going just to start shit. That’s the day before Pete Wentz’s book signing.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patrick stood in line in the over-crowded Barnes and Noble, his heart pounding and his palms sweating. It was hot, too many bodies in one small space, and he was so nervous that he’d begun to contemplate the non-zero chance that he was going to end up throwing up on someone. It had been two weeks since Brendon had told him about Pete’s book signing, and ever since then he’d been changing his mind like he was pulling petals off a flower. He loves me, he loves me not. He’ll take me back, he won’t want to see my face ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, everybody, here we are! It's the last week and this story is done. We're a day late again, but we hope you think this last chapter was worth the wait ♥

Patrick stood in line in the over-crowded Barnes and Noble, his heart pounding and his palms sweating. It was hot, too many bodies in one small space, and he was so nervous that he’d begun to contemplate the non-zero chance that he was going to end up throwing up on someone. It had been two weeks since Brendon had told him about Pete’s book signing, and ever since then he’d been changing his mind like he was pulling petals off a flower. He loves me, he loves me not. He’ll take me back, he won’t want to see my face ever again.  
  
That morning, he’d woken up determined not to go. He wasn’t going to beg, that was pathetic, and after some of the things he’d said, the thought of coming face to face with Pete filled him with violent, corrosive shame. By lunchtime, he’d decided to go after all. If nothing else, he owed Pete an apology. As he washed up his plate and stuffed the takeout containers into the garbage can, he couldn’t believe he’d ever thought about going. What did he think was going to happen, realistically? Did he really want to put himself out there just for Pete to turn him down in front of an audience? He’d settled there for a while, pleased to have made a decision, but an hour or two later he’d begun to reconsider. What did he want? Well, that was easy. He’d worked his last shift at Mise En Place, and he was as free as a bird. He didn’t know where he was headed next, but he knew he wanted Pete back. But was this really the way to do it? He’d thought back to the time when they’d been near-strangers and Pete had kept on coming around, taking every chance to talk to Patrick even though he knew Patrick was only going to shoot him down.  
  
Patrick had sighed, because he’d known, then, what he had to do. Going to the book signing was a big, dumb, Hollywood gesture. It was over the top and cheesy and there was a very real chance that it could blow up spectacularly in his face. It was, in other words, exactly the kind of thing Pete would have done.  
  
So there he was, standing in line, clutching a brand new hardback with Pete’s name on the cover like a lifeline. His sweaty hands were already wrinkling the crisp, straight edges of the pages. He checked his watch, gnawing anxiously on his lower lip. The signing had been underway for a couple of hours already by the time he’d made his mind up, and when he’d arrived he’d joined what seemed like an impossibly long line. He’d been shuffling forward, inch by inch, for the last hour. He was nearing the front, but the signing was meant to finish at five and the minutes were ticking down. Now he’d committed to his course of action, the thought of not being able to see it through was unbearable. A couple more people had joined the line behind him since he’d arrived, but they’d drifted away, apparently having decided that getting their books autographed wasn’t worth the wait. Patrick was the last person waiting, his pulse thudding in his ears and his stomach twisting, his hands gripping the book so tightly his knuckles were white. He didn’t know how Pete could live like this, with his heart on his sleeve all the time. He could hear Pete’s voice, asking questions and laughing, and his own heart flip-flopped in his chest.  
  
When he finally, finally reached the front of the line with a minute and thirty-seven seconds to go before five, Pete was scribbling on a page torn out of a notebook and throwing one pen after another aside as he tried to find one that still worked. Patrick ached, just looking at him. Pete had let the bleach grow out of his hair and it was dark again, a little longer than it had been, salt and pepper stubble on his chin, his tattoos wrapping dark and dense around his arms. There was a small, guilty stack of Starbucks cups by his elbow, but he seemed… lighter. Happier than he’d been while he’d been at the Tribune, even if he was wrung-out and exhausted.  
  
“Sorry, man,” Pete said, without looking up. “These fucking pens keep dying on me, just gotta find… there we go, that one works. Who should I make this out to?”  
  
Patrick swallowed. “An asshole,” he said, hoarsely, and Pete’s head snapped up like he’d been shocked.  
  
Several different expressions flickered across Pete’s face, too fast for Patrick to read, and then it settled into a cool remoteness that made Patrick feel sick. “You want a message to go with that? Dear Asshole, thanks for showing up out of the fucking blue after ten months of radio silence?”  
  
Patrick’s heart was pounding so hard it felt like it might deafen him, shout down his protests and make him do something crazy. “Yeah,” he said, attempting a queasy smile. His face felt rubbery, like he’d forgotten how to use it. “Something like that.”  
  
Pete sighed. “I can’t--I’m not doing this here.”  
  
“No,” said Patrick, quickly. “No, that’s… that’s fine, whatever you--”  
  
“We should talk.” Pete ran one hand through his hair. There were deep, dark circles under his eyes. “Shit. You want to come back to mine? I’m not airing my dirty laundry in the middle of a fucking Barnes and Noble.”  
  
“Yeah,” said Patrick, pathetically grateful, his mouth dry. Pete’s face was still guarded, but he wasn’t dismissing Patrick outright. That had to be a good sign, right? “Yeah, please.”  
  
“Alright. Give me five minutes.” Pete got to his feet and stretched, wincing. He’d been in that chair all afternoon, Patrick thought, no wonder he was hurting. He had to be exhausted. Pete picked up the jacket draped over the back of the chair where he’d been sitting and grabbed the messenger bag from under the table, and Patrick waited for what felt like hours as he said his goodbyes, thanked the manager of the Barnes and Noble and had a quiet, tense conversation with the smartly-dressed, iPad-wielding woman who Patrick assumed was his agent.  
  
When Pete was finally, finally free, he turned to look at Patrick. Did the tension in his shoulders ease by a degree or two, or was that just wishful thinking on Patrick’s part? “Alright,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

 

*

 

Patrick’s shoulders hit the mirrored back wall of the elevator with a thud, but he barely felt it. They’d sat painfully still and quiet in the back seats of the taxi back to Pete’s apartment, both acutely aware of the space between them and the way it crackled, like thunderclouds gathering on the horizon, and now the heavens had opened. Pete was kissing him before the elevator doors had finished sliding shut behind them, stabbing blindly at the button as his other hand found Patrick’s collar and reeled him in. Patrick kissed back hungrily, his body overruling his brain as he clutched desperately at Pete. He could feel Pete pushing closer, pinning him to the wall as the elevator began to rise. It was messy and artless, Pete’s hands fluttering from his hips to his shoulders to his hair while Patrick gasped and scrabbled at Pete’s back like he was drowning, pulling him closer. Pete fitted one hand to Patrick’s jaw, tilting his face up, and Patrick whined as he felt Pete’s tongue slip into his mouth.  
  
“We should--fuck, fuck, we were gonna talk,” said Patrick, indistinctly.  
  
“You wanna talk?” Pete growled, giving Patrick a little shove for emphasis. “Ten months of _nothing_ and then it’s oh, hey, sign my book, like nothing ever happened? What the _fuck_ , Patrick.”  
  
Patrick shuddered. Under normal circumstances, he would have been trying to make space, take back control, but Pete had him pinned to the wall and just then he wouldn’t have traded places with anyone. Pete was hot and close, his hands all over Patrick, his mouth eager and demanding, and Patrick was exactly where he wanted to be.  
  
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open and they pulled apart, both breathing hard.  
  
“Come on,” said Pete. He took Patrick’s hand - Patrick was sure Pete could feel his pulse thundering away under his skin - and dragged him down the hallway. Patrick waited impatiently while Pete fumbled with the key, cursing under his breath, until the door finally swung open and they stumbled inside. Pete was single-minded, yanking the door shut again behind them and push-pulling Patrick down the hallway to his bedroom.  
  
“Off,” he said, biting at Patrick’s lip and tugging at the hem of his t-shirt.  
  
Patrick didn’t need to be told twice. There had been the bartender last new year’s eve and a handful of other hookups since then, but it had been like snacking when what you really wanted was a three-course meal. He pulled off his jacket and wriggled out of his shirt, and by the time he’d started on his jeans Pete was already stepping out of his boxers. It was happening fast, everything playing at double speed, but Patrick didn’t care. He’d been starving for this for months. He kicked his shoes off and Pete dragged him down onto the bed, kissing him deep and dirty. Patrick gave as good as he got, letting Pete roll him over onto his back and curling his hand around the nape of Pete’s neck to pull him in.  
  
“Alright,” said Pete. Patrick could feel Pete’s stubble scratching against his skin and it felt like a million tiny electric shocks, hot and bright. “What are we doing?”  
  
Patrick didn’t think twice. “Fuck me,” he said, immediately. “Please.”  
  
Pete sat back on his heels and raised an eyebrow, looking surprised. “Yeah?”  
  
Patrick nodded, breathless and hard already. “Yeah.” Slowly, deliberately, not taking his eyes off Pete’s, he raised his hands and laid them back down on the pillow, up above his head, hoping Pete would understand that this was him giving up control.  
  
Pete’s expression flickered. “If this is some kind of fucked-up penance thing you feel like you need to suffer through--”  
  
“It’s not.” Patrick bit his lip but didn’t move his hands. “I want to.”  
  
Pete grinned, all sharp teeth and hot, dark eyes. “Okay,” he said, and reached into the nightstand for lube. “Okay.”  
  
He worked Patrick open slow and careful until Patrick was keening and clutching the pillow to stop himself grabbing Pete’s hair or getting a hand on his dick. He could feel Pete’s eyes on him, cataloguing the way he reacted to every touch. It was terrifying to feel so completely seen and understood, but he was trying to lean into it. Pete kept on working his fingers until Patrick was whimpering, his hips moving involuntarily as he fucked himself on Pete’s hand.  
  
“Keep your eyes open,” said Pete, in a voice like gravel. “Look at me, come on.”  
  
Patrick shuddered and forced himself to meet Pete’s eyes. “God,” he said, raggedly. Pete’s head was between his legs, resting his cheek against Patrick’s thigh and watching while his fingers drove Patrick slowly out of his mind.  
  
Patrick licked his lips and said, reckless, crazy with it, “You could, uh. If you get me off first you can fuck me afterwards.”  
  
Pete’s breath hitched like he’d been sucker punched. “Shit,” he said, his fingers stilling inside Patrick. “That’s--are you sure?”  
  
Patrick fought the urge to look away. He could feel himself blushing, hot and furious, the flush spreading down his neck and over his chest. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s… I like it.”  
  
Pete cursed under his breath and ducked his head against Patrick’s thigh, then looked back up at him, grinning. “Yeah?”  
  
“Fuck you, yeah,” Patrick choked out. He was so close to coming he could feel it in his spine. Pete had had him on the edge for what felt like hours, turning him inside out, and Patrick needed pressure to break.  
  
Pete didn’t bother with any more fancy teasing stuff, just curled three fingers deep into Patrick and wrapped his mouth around Patrick’s cock and sank down deep, and Patrick’s back arched up off of the bed as he came so hard he saw stars. Pete pulled off and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Fuck,” he said, reverently. He dropped a kiss on the soft, sensitive skin of Patrick’s inner thigh and Patrick hissed through his teeth, feeling every point of contact like an electric shock. “What can I…?”  
  
“Keep your fingers there,” said Patrick. He was panting, and he could feel himself clenching involuntarily around them as the aftershocks tore through him. Pete must have been able to feel it too.  
  
“Fuuuuck,” Pete said again, long and low and drawn-out. “Look at you.”  
  
Patrick gasped something unintelligible. Now that the bright, searing pleasure was fading, he was left achingly sensitive and excruciatingly aware of Pete’s fingers inside him. He clenched again, this time on purpose, and watched Pete’s eyes widen. He knew what he had to look like, flushed pink and sweaty, sprawled out with his legs spread wide and his dick going soft against his belly, Pete’s fingers still inside him. He felt so raw, like an exposed nerve, and the only thing keeping him from tipping into abject humiliation was the way Pete was looking at him, hot and hungry. “You can, uh. You can move them,” said Patrick, shifting his hips a little and shivering. “Just - be gentle.”  
  
“Yeah,” murmured Pete, carefully easing his fingers almost all the way out and edging them back in. Patrick hissed, his fingers clenching in the pillow by his head. Pete stopped moving and looked up at him, eyebrows raised.  
  
“Too much?”  
  
“That’s - kind of the point,” Patrick gasped. “Come on, Pete, just--” he broke off and groaned when Pete’s fingers twitched inside him.  
  
“You like this,” said Pete, wonderingly. “You really like this.”  
  
Patrick nodded, frantically, still snapping for breath. He loved this part, when every sensation was cranked up to eleven and the slightest touch was deafeningly amplified. Pete’s fingers were slick and so, so good, twisting as he pushes them in, simultaneously punching Patrick’s YES and NO buttons. “Yeah,” he said, weakly. “Yeah, it’s--I don’t really, uh. With other people, you know. But I do it by myself sometimes, it’s… it’s so much.”  
  
“God,” Pete said faintly, curling his fingers and groaning when Patrick jerked and cried out. “God, that’s fucking hot. I wanna see that, I wanna watch you fuck yourself on your fingers until it’s so much and so good you can’t stand it.” He pushed a third finger in and Patrick whimpered, one hand twitching convulsively towards Pete - whether to push Pete away or pull him in closer, he didn’t know. “Uh uh, baby,” Pete murmured, reaching up with his free hand to pin Patrick’s wrist to the sheets. “Keep ‘em up there.”  
  
Patrick swallowed and tried to keep his hands still. “I’ll let you--oh, fuck, I’ll let you watch sometime,” he said. He wondered if Pete was picturing it, imagining him wrecked and fucked out, his stomach spattered with his own come and his own fingers sinking into him. The shocking intensity of Pete’s touch was beginning to ease, just a little, but he was still so strung out on it all that he barely knew what he was saying. “God. Can’t wait for you to fuck me. I’m so fucking sensitive, I’m gonna feel everything.” Three fingers felt good, fucking great, but it was going to be even better when it was Pete’s cock working him open and filling him up. He was beginning to get hard again, the confused sensations zinging around his body pooling slow and warm in the pit of his stomach.  
  
Pete shuddered, and Patrick felt it. “You ready?” he said.  
  
Patrick nodded, breathless, and Pete grinned. He pulled his fingers out and rolled over, reaching into the nightstand for condoms.  
  
“Good to see you’re on board,” said Patrick, biting his lip as Pete tore open the foil packet, rolled the condom on and settled himself between Patrick’s thighs. Pete reached down to line himself up, but didn’t push in. Patrick squirmed impatiently, his whole body taut and singing with anticipation. “Come _on_ ,” he said. “Come on, come on, I’m ready.”  
  
“This isn’t your show,” Pete murmured, sliding his hands up Patrick’s arms and pinning his wrists to the mattress. “You wanna get mouthy with me now?”  
  
Pete still wasn’t making any move to push in, the head of his cock rubbing teasingly against Patrick’s hole. Patrick could have cried, he felt so desperate. He wanted the ache and the stretch and the blunt press of Pete’s cock inside him. He was rocking his hips almost involuntarily, craving more. Pete’s hands were tight around Patrick’s wrists, and Patrick couldn’t have hidden even if he’d wanted to. It felt like being laid open, all of him exposed for Pete to see. It was painfully intimate in a way that Patrick normally hated, but it felt good, like being scoured clean.  
  
“I’ll stop, I’ll shut up,” Patrick promised, wildly. He barely knew what he was saying; all he wanted was for this slow, tortuous teasing to stop.  
  
“Good,” said Pete, and Patrick made a high, thin noise as he felt the head of Pete’s cock pop into him, his whole body jerking like he’d been shocked. Pete took his time, pushing into him in one long, slow, devastating thrust that left Patrick panting and shuddering.  
  
“Shit,” Pete gasped, his eyes screwed shut and his teeth gritted. He was holding perfectly, painfully still, almost shaking with the effort. “Fuck, you feel amazing, you’re so fucking hot. You okay?” He moved his hand to sweep Patrick’s sweaty hair away from his forehead, and Patrick shuddered.  
  
“God, yeah. Fuck, I can’t--move, please, just--”  
  
“You got it,” said Pete, his voice tight, and he snapped his hips back and then forward again, once, hard and fast.  
  
Patrick made a noise that was almost a sob, his dick twitching against his stomach. He could feel himself getting hard again. He was hyper-aware of Pete’s hands on his wrists and Pete’s cock inside him, stretching him out. He was too overwhelmed to do anything but take it, and it was so fucking good. He wrapped one leg around Pete’s back, pulling him in, and Pete took the hint. He fucked Patrick slow and deep, in long, steady thrusts that had Patrick shaking and gasping.  
  
“You sound incredible,” Pete panted, and Patrick realised with a start that he was making breathy, helpless little noises every time Pete bottomed out. “How’re you doing?”  
  
Patrick laughed, but it got lost somewhere and came out as a moan instead. “Really, really good. Shit, I can’t think straight.”  
  
Pete grinned down at him, white teeth and those burnt sugar eyes. “Yeah? Let’s see if we can fix that.” He sped up, fucking into Patrick with short, deep thrusts that punched all the breath out of Patrick. He clutched at Pete, sweaty hands slipping on Pete’s back, and buried his face in Pete’s neck. Patrick could tell Pete was getting close, moaning and gasping, his hips jumping every time Patrick tensed around him.  
  
“You feel amazing,” said Patrick, helplessly. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, god, you’re--yeah, c’mon. God.”  
  
Pete was making short, sharp, hurt little sounds every time he pushed forward, shuddering like he’s right on the edge. Patrick didn’t want to come again before Pete did - he didn’t think there was any danger of that, as long as he kept his hands off his own dick, but god, this felt so good, maybe, maybe - but then Pete’s eyes went wide and he made the most incredible noise, low and drawn-out and gorgeous, and his whole body went taut as he came.  
  
Patrick stroked Pete’s back as he shook through it, his eyes fluttering shut and his body going limp and boneless against Patrick.  
  
“God,” said Patrick, hoarsely. “God, you’re gorgeous.”  
  
Pete smiled and leant down to kiss Patrick. “Right back at you. Jesus.” He pulled out, slow and careful, and they both winced. Patrick was in that weird place where he was simultaneously fucked-out and desperate to come, so hot and sensitive all over that he felt almost feverish. He ran one hand down his own chest, feeling it like a fizzing comet tail on his skin, and wrapped it around his dick. His hips jumped, but Pete gently pushed his hand away.  
  
“Hey,” he said. He was flushed and grinning, his hair damp with sweat and his eyes huge and dark. “Hey, c’mon, let me look after you. What do you want, baby?”  
  
Patrick made a noise that sounded pathetic even to him, this long, drawn out whine. “God, your hand, your mouth, your fingers, anything. Just make me come. Please.”  
  
Pete shut his eyes for a moment, shivering. “Listen to you. Yeah. Yeah, I’ve got you.”  
  
Pete raised his hand to Patrick’s mouth and Patrick opened up so Pete could slip his fingers in, moaning around them. Fuck, that was hot. Pete curled his spit-slick fingers around Patrick’s dick and Patrick made a helpless, desperate little noise. He was close and Pete jerked him off hard and fast until Patrick’s hips were jackrabbitting against the mattress.  
  
Pete was talking softly under his breath, coaxing Patrick along, the tattoos on his wrist blurring. Patrick could hear his own voice rising high and loud as Pete pushed him closer and closer to the edge. His hips bucked one last time and then he was coming, a slow, intense flare of pleasure edged with pain. It left Patrick shaking and soundless on the bed, fingers white-knuckled in the sheets. He collapsed back onto the pillows, panting, his own come drying sticky on his stomach. He was pretty sure he was never going to move again. His bones had turned to honey, and he felt blissfully… quiet. Hollowed out, but in a good way. This is it, he thought, nonsensically, as Pete dealt with the condom and came back to lie down next to him, his chest still rising and falling fast and his tattoos shining with sweat. This is it. This is the thing that makes everything else okay.  
  
“Good game,” said Pete, cracking one eye open and turning his head to grin at Patrick.  
  
Patrick nodded, his brain still too fried to string the right words together. Pete wriggled closer, his shoulder bumping against Patrick’s. Just then, Patrick felt like that one little point of contact was all that was keeping him anchored. Slowly, his breathing evened out and his heart rate dropped back to normal, sweat cooling on his skin. This was the most vulnerable he could remember being around another person, ever, and it had felt good and right and important in the moment, but reality was beginning to set in. Pete might not want him back, he thought. For all he knew, Pete was just waiting it out until he felt like he could ask Patrick to leave. Patrick felt broken open and dangerously close to doing something really awful, like bursting into tears.  
  
“Hey,” Pete said, gently. “So. We should probably talk, huh?”  
  
“Yeah.” Patrick swallowed. All he could feel was a kind of humming blankness. “Yeah, let’s… talk.”  
  
“Why’d you come back?” Pete asked.  
  
This was Patrick’s chance to make the speech he’d been rehearsing for the last two weeks, but all that came out was, “I missed you.”  
  
Pete sighed and sat up, pulling the covers into his lap like he was feeling vulnerable too. “Yeah,” he said. “I missed you too. But this can’t be--if this was just a bonus fuck, this has got to be the last time. I can’t do it again. It’s not fair.”  
  
“No!” said Patrick, quickly. Maybe, he thought, just maybe, he had a shot, but it all hung on Pete understanding that this was about more than that. “No, no. It wasn’t… it’s not like that. I want--” he hesitated, thought about it, and started again. “I said some really shitty things to you because I was scared and I was pissed off and I kind of knew you were right.”  
  
“Keep talking,” said Pete. He was watching Patrick with a careful, neutral expression, his eyes ever so slightly narrowed. Patrick felt like this was a test.  
  
“It took me a while to admit to myself that I was done,” he said, looking down at his hands. “And even longer to, like, actually do something about it. That’s why I didn’t come around and beg you to take me back. I wanted to. I really, really wanted to. I just felt like I had to get my head straight first.”  
  
“I heard you quit,” said Pete, which shouldn’t have surprised Patrick. People had been lining up to tell him about Pete leaving the Tribune; it stood to reason that Pete had got the same treatment from his own friends. “You better not have done that for me, or I give it six months before you start resenting the hell out of me.”  
  
Patrick snorted. “I didn’t do it for you,” he said. He saw Pete relax, just by a degree or two.  
  
“Good,” he said. “So what’s the plan now? Join another restaurant?”  
  
“God, no. I’m out. No. No plans, as of right now.”  
  
Pete smiled, slow and warm. “Alright,” he said. “Alright. So how about dinner tonight?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That’s all, folks! We hope you’ve had as much fun reading this story as we did writing it. We did a lot of reading, and we’d particularly like to recommend Jezebel’s Behind Closed Ovens feature (continued as Off The Menu on Wonkette and later on Thrillist) for behind-the-scenes restaurant craziness and Jay Rayner’s writing for the Guardian for some absolutely vicious reviews.


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